INTRODUCTION xiii 



When I protested with a popular nature-writer 

 some time ago at one of his exciting but utterly im- 

 possible fox stories, he wrote back, — 



" The publishers demanded that chapter to make 

 the book sell." 



Now the publishers of this book make no such 

 demands. Indeed they have had an expert naturalist 

 and woodsman hunting up and down every line of 

 this book for errors of fact, false suggestions, wrong 

 sentiments, and extraordinaries of every sort. If this 

 book is not exciting it is the publishers' fault. It 

 may not be exciting, but I believe, and hope, that 

 it is true to all of my out of doors, and not untrue 

 to any of yours. 



The charge of insincerity, the last in the list, 

 concerns the author's style and sentiments. It does 

 not belong in the same category with the other two, 

 for it really includes them. Insincerity is the mother 

 of all the literary sins. If the writer cannot be true 

 to himself, he cannot be true to anything. Children 

 are the particular victims of the evil. How often are 

 children spoken to in baby-talk, gush, hollow ques- 

 tions, and a condescension as irritating as coming 

 teeth ! They are written to, also, in the same spirit. 



The temptation to sentimentalize in writing of the 

 " beauties of nature " is very strong. Raptures run 

 through nature books as regularly as barbs the length 

 of wire fences. The world according to such books 

 is like the Garden of Eden according to Ridinger, 



