Lake Umbagog
1907.
August
  It must be admitted that the "nature fakers" have
atoned, at least in part, for the harm which they have done
by interesting very many people - who probably could not 
have been reached in other and sensational ways -
in the study of nature. In their estimate of animal
intelligence, too, they have, I think, come nearer the
truth - despite their frequent exaggeration or distortion of
it - than have such of their critics as are disposed to
deny that any animal except man can possess reasoning
powers. Nor is it necessary to assume that even the
worst offenders among them are deliberately and consciously
untruthful. Much more likely is it that one and all
of them are victims of perfervid and ill-regulated
imaginations or as Dr. Merriam has suggested with
force and probability that they have what Dr. Wright
has called "creative memories". Indeed there are excellent
reasons for believing that they possess some such fatal
gifts by the aid of which - and more or less 
unwittingly - they build up wonderful structures of
pure fancy inventing incidents utterly beyond belief
and picturing the animals of which they treat in
grotesque and misleading terms.
  The latter sin has never been committed by Mr. Seton
although it cannot be denied that he has too often
given free rein to a splendid imagination without acknowledging
or perhaps realizing the fact. But his Wolf is ever
a Wolf, his Fox a Fox, and his Bighorn a Bighorn,
however marvellous may be the facts of intelligence or
of physical endurance which it is made to achieve.
With the hand of the master that he is he depicts
all its characteristics of appearance and behavior so