BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN 
LEAFLETS 
Series IX Brooklyn, N.Y., June 15, 1921. 
No. 6 
JOHN BURROUGHS 
TEACHER, POET AND NATURALIST 
"O Papalasri. I say. your people looker beyond the 
mountains at the stars for the wisdom of the grreat 
waters, when ’tis only to be heard in the sweet-toned 
shells that are scattered on the sunny shores of child- 
hood."— O Le Langi. 
John Burroughs has journeyed past the last earthly mile- 
post. Physically he is no more among us. Spiritually he will 
live forever, for he was of the breed of Thoreau, Emerson and 
Gilbert White of Selborne. He possessed the rare power of 
making the commonplace nature life in the midst of our civiliza- 
tion wonderful and fascinating. Through his eyes we were 
taught to see that our near-at-hand wild life is just as marvellous 
as that of some far off tropical land. He was an explorer of the 
agricultural wilderness. He told us in an understandable way 
the story of the mountains, the fields, the seasons and the wild 
life that we meet with every day in our civilized populous com- 
munities. “ The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the 
beauty and wonder of the world. I hardly know which feeling 
leads, wonderment or admiration.” Thus he writes in “The 
Summit of the Years.” As with the old pagan Samoan poet, 
O Le Langi, of whom Safroni-Middleton writes, John Burroughs 
listened with the ears of a child, and never ceased his wonder- 
ment at Nature's ways. He never became a dry, sophisticated 
scientist. His discoveries of the ways of birds and of wood- 
chucks, of squirrels and of wild flowers always gave him the 
thrill of the explorer in the unknown wilderness. His success is 
Thoreau’s “If the day and night are such that you greet them 
with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented 
herbs, is more starry, more immortal,— that is your success. All 
nature is your congratulation and you have cause to momentarily 
bless yourself.” The song of the hermit thrush meant more to 
him than the songs of the great opera singers in the “crowded 
lives of men.” “I have loved the feel of the grass under my 
feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side,” he 
