PREFACE 
THE title and the treatment of this book re- 
quire a few sentences of explanation. The word 
“‘ Nature,” as it is used in these pages, does not 
comprehend animal life in any form whatever. 
It is applied only to lights, skies, clouds, waters, 
lands, foliage—the great elements that reveal 
form and color in landscape, the component 
parts of the earth-beauty about us. In treating 
of this nature I have not considered it as the 
classic or romantic background of human story, 
nor regarded man as an essential factor in it. 
Nature is neither classic nor romantic; it is 
simply—nature. Nor is it, as some would have 
us think, a sympathetic friend of mankind en- 
dowed with semi-human emotions. Mountains 
do not ‘‘ frown,” trees do not ‘‘ weep,” nor do 
skies ‘‘smile”; they are quite incapable of 
doing so. Indeed, so far as any sympathy with 
humanity is concerned, “the last of thy brothers 
might vanish from the face of the earth, and not 
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