LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 



With the nature student, the human interest in the 

 wild creatures — by which I mean our interest in 

 them as hving, 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 love 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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