36 
NATURE NOTES. 
see through it. We are in the same boat. This that you call study is only another 
kind of sport.’ I could have shaken hands with him but that he had the oars.” 
Is it because Mr. Burroughs tells us so little about his own species and so 
much about every other that we prefer him to Mr. Torrey ? In spite of the time- 
worn aphorism as to “ the proper study,” we fear it is so. At any rate, he gives 
us a personal in the things he describes, which Mr. Torrey fails to convey, 
pleasant as his essays are. Riverby, the title of the book, is “ the name of my 
place here on the Hudson, where the sketches were written, and where for so 
many years I have been an interested spectator of the life of nature, as, with the 
changing seasons, it has ebbed and flowed past my door.” Those who do not 
know Mr. Burroughs’s books should read Mr. Warde Fowler’s appreciation of 
them in Nature Notes for 1891, p. 290; those who do will join in our hope 
that this will not, as the preface indicates, be his “ last collection of out-of-door 
papers.” 
As an example of observation, what can be better than the description of 
“ the early species of everlasting, commonly called mouse ear,” in the first de- 
lightful chapter, “ Among the Wild Flowers.” He is like Mr. Grant Allen at 
his best in his powers of description, with the additional advantage of freedom from 
wild speculation and untrammelled imagination. In the chapter “Lovers of 
Nature ” we have Mr. Burroughs’s estimate of Thoreau and Richard Jefferies, 
hardly, we think, as appreciative as might have been expected. “ Richard 
Jefferies was not strictly an observer ; he was a loving and sympathetic spectator 
of the nature about him. A poet if you please, but he tells us little that is 
memorable or suggestive” ; while as to Thoreau, “considering that he spent half 
of each day for upwards of twenty years in the open air, bent upon spying out 
nature’s ways and doings, it is remarkable that he made so few real observations.” 
“ Hasty Observation ” and “ Talks with Young Observers ” are full of suggestive- 
ness ; but Mr. Burroughs ought not to misspell the name of one of the greatest 
of American botanists — “ Torry ” for Torrey. There is, indeed, or it seems to 
us, more variety in this than any of his previous volumes, and even more freshness 
of description ; and this, as every reader of Mr. Burroughs will admit, is no small 
praise. 
A suggestion contained in one of the essays in this volume has already been 
acted on, though we are bound to say it does not seem to us a very happy one. 
“One of these days,” says Mr. Burroughs, “ some one will give us a handbook 
on our wild flowers, by the aid of which we shall all be able to name those we 
gather in our walks without the trouble of analysing them. In this book we shall 
have a list of all our flowers arranged according to colour, as white flowers, blue 
flowers, yellow flowers, pink flowers, &c., with place and growth and time of 
blooming.” This idea suggested to Mrs. William Starr Dana her pretty book. 
How to knoiu the Wild Flowers (New York : Charles Scribner’s Sons), which is 
already in its fourth edition. Taking for her motto this passage from Jefferies : 
“ The first conscious thought about wild flowers was to find out their names, and 
then I began to see so many that I had not previously noticed ; once you wish to 
identify them, there is nothing escapes, down to the little white chickweed of the 
path and moss of the wall,” Mrs. Dana proceeds to guide us to “ the names, 
haunts, and habits of our common wild flowers.” In spite of its unscientific 
arrangement, this is an excellent book, and cannot fail to bring about its object, 
so long, that is, as sedges, grasses, and the like are avoided, for these trouble- 
some groups are entirely omitted. There are useful introductory chapters, and a 
scientific description of each species precedes the popular account of it, which 
latter often contains much interesting information. The mode of arrangement by 
colour, however, separates members of the same genus : thus the green 
Asclepias verticillata is on p. no, the pink A. Cornuti on p. 192, and the 
“ red” A. tuberosa on p. 222. The introduction of cross-references under these 
would at least enable folk to bring allied plants together, though it may be con- 
tended that this is sufficiently achieved by the index. A word must be said in 
praise of the very excellent illustrations by Marion Satterlee, nearly all of which 
are original drawings from nature. We have seldom seen figures in which the 
habit of the plant is more accurately rendered. 
