xii INTRODUCTION 



More serious than dullness (and that is serious 

 enough) is the charge that nature books are untrust- 

 worthy, that they falsify the facts, and give a wrong 

 impression of nature. Some nature books do, as 

 some novels do with the facts of human life. A 

 nature book all full of extraordinary, better-class 

 animals who do extraordinary stunts because of their 

 superior powers has little of real nature in it. There 

 are no such extraordinary animals, they do no such 

 extraordinary things. Nature is full of marvels — 

 Niagara Falls, a flying swallow, a star, a ragweed, 

 a pebble; but nature is not full of dragons and cen- 

 taurs and foxes that reason like men and take their 

 tea with lemon, if you please. 



I have never seen one of these extraordinary ani- 

 mals, never saw anything extraordinary out of doors, 

 because the ordinary is so surprisingly marvelous. 

 And I have lived in the woods practically all of my 

 life. And you will never see one of them — a very 

 good argument against anybody's having seen 

 them. 



The world out of doors is not a circus of perform- 

 ing prodigies, nor are nature-writers strange half- 

 ? human creatures who know wood-magic, who talk 

 with trees, and call the birds and beasts about them 

 as did one of the saints of old. No, they are plain 

 people, who have seen nothing more wonderful in 

 the woods than you have, if they would tell the 

 truth. 



