LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 
With the nature student, the human interest in the 
wild creatures — by which I mean our interest in 
them as living, struggling beings — dominates the 
scientific interest, or our interest in them merely as 
subjects for comparison and classification. 
Gilbert White was a rare combination of the 
nature student and the man of science, and his book 
is one of the minor English classics. Richard Jef- 
feries was a true nature lover, but his interests rarely 
take a scientific turn. Our Thoreau was in Jove with 
the natural, but still more in love with the super- 
natural; yet he prized the fact, and his books abound 
in delightful natural history observations. We have 
a host of nature students in our own day, bent on 
plucking out the heart of every mystery in the fields 
and woods. Some are dryly scientific, some are dull 
and prosy, some are sentimental, some are sensa- 
tional, and a few are altogether admirable. Mr. 
Thompson Seton, as an artist and raconteur, ranks 
by far the highest in this field, but in reading his 
works as natural history, one has to be constantly on 
guard against his romantic tendencies. 
The structure of animals, their colors, their orna- 
ments, their distribution, their migrations, all have 
a significance that science may interpret for us if 
it can, but it is the business of every observer to 
report truthfully what he sees, and not to confound 
his facts with his theories. 
Why does the cowbird lay its egg in another bird’s 
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