‘ T IS MANIFEST THAT MR. LONG HAS BEEN

°° *H 4 KEEN OBSERVER AND A TRUTHFUL
RECORDER, 4ND THAT MR. BURROUGHS PASSED THE
BOUNDS OF COURTESY
AND TRUE CRITICISM IN
DENOUNCING THE WRIT-
INGS OF A YOUNGER MAN
SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY
CONTAINED THE RECORD
OF FACTS AND IMPRES-
SIONS WHICH HAD NEVER
COME TO HIS PERSONAL
KNOWLEDGE.” —From the
Boston Transcripr, May 20, 1903.

WILLIAM J. LONG
AND HIS BOOKS

4 PAMPHLET

CONSISTING

CHIEFLY OF
TYPICAL LETTERS

AND REVIEWS

IN REPLY TO
MR. BURROUGHS’

UNWARRANTED

ATTACK ON MR. LONG

GINN & COMPANY Pustisuers

CONTENTS

Pace

TYPICAL LETTERS AND REVIEWS
IN REPLY TO MR. BURROUGHS’
UNWARRANTED ATTACK ON
MR. LONG

THE GIST OF MR. BURROUGHS’
ATTACK...

CHARACTERISTIC REPLIES TO
MR. BURROUGHS

From Zhe Connecticut Magazine

From Our Animal Friends . « « « « + 5
From 7he Ypsilantian. . . 7
From Zhe Mew eae Journal of ube
HO 5 ian) io) 101s) ene Jey eae 8
APPRECIATIONS OF MR. LONG
AND HIS WORK
The Work of William J. Long. ie Richard
Burton : bay
From Hamilton Wright Mabie oer) aon aan a
From Zhe Christian Register « « + « « 17
From William Lyon Phelps . . . 17
From Zhe New York Tribune 17
From Zhe Boston Herald. cis sb es eee
From Sara A. Hubbard. <) is isiiiae 19
From Our Animal Friends BANG? ae ae ee
From Zhe School World, London . .. . 22
From Zhe Boston Advertiser « 23
From The Christian Advocate « 23
From Public Opinion Ee erred k a:
From Zhe Independent . . . .« « »-« 2

A LETTER FROM MR. LONG ,, .

25

TYPICAL LETTERS AND REVIEWS

IN REPLY TO

Mr. BuRROUGHS’ UNWARRANTED
ATTACK ON Mr. LONG

The Gist of Mr, Burroughs’ Attack

4“ R. LONG’S book reads like that of a man who
M has really never been to the woods, but who sits
in his study and cooks up these yarns from things

he has read in Forest and Stream, or in other
sporting journals. Of real observation there
is hardly a vestige in his book; of deliberate
trifling with natural history there is no end.
. Why should any one palm off such stuff
on an unsuspecting public as veritable natural
history? When a man, writing or speaking
of his own experience, says without qualifi-
cation that he has seen a thing, we are ex-
pected to take him at his word. Mr. Long
says his sketches were made in the woods,
with the subjects themselves living just out-
side his tent door, and that they are all life
studies and include also some of the unusual
life secrets of a score of animals and birds.
. What the ‘life secrets’ are that he
claims to have discovered, any competent

I

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

—

reader can see. They are all the inventions of Mr.
Long. Of the real secrets of wild life, I do not find a
trace in his volume.” — From “ Real and Sham Natural
History,” the Av/antic Monthly, March, 1903.

CBG DAADAAD

CHARACTERISUICG, REREPES
TO MR. BURROUGHS

FSS SED

From The Connecticut Magazine, Vol. VIII, No.1,

Series of 1903

mk LONG, who for many years has
\% beena quiet and patient observer
of animals in their native wilds,
has of late given us some delight-
ful books that profess to record
these observations. Mr. Bur-
roughs denies these observations
categorically ; calls them inven-
tions, on the sole ground that he
is himself an observer and has
not seen these things; and condemns Mr. Long for
perpetrating a fraud on an innocent public.

This is a personal question between two writers ;
the personal element must therefore enter into the dis-
cussion of it. Dr. Long is, by reputation and by the tes-
timony of all who know him, a gentleman of honor and
integrity. His life has been one long search for the
verities. At eighteen years he made the sacrifice that
few can measure, of giving up home, friends, money,
position, to follow what seemed to him the truth. He

DSI
5 eas

a
-

Mr. William J. Long

From ‘«‘Who’s Who in America”

LONG, WILLIAM JOSEPH. Born, North Attleboro,
Mass., April 3, 1867. Graduated, Bridgewater (Mas-
sachusetts) State Normal School, 1887; Harvard, 1892
Andover Theological Seminary, 1895; Ph.D., Heidel-
berg, 1897. Made notable defense of ministerial liberty
at Cambridge (Massachusetts Council), 1898. Author
of ‘‘The Making of Zimri Bunker,” 1898; ‘* Ways
of Wood Folk,’’ 1899; ‘‘ Wilderness Ways,”’ 1900;
“Beasts of the Field,’’ 1r901; ‘‘ Fowls of the Air,”
1go1. Has contributed various poems, stories, and
articles in many magazines.

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

is a scholar, a graduate of Bridge-
water Normal School; of Harvard
University ; of Andover Theologi-
cal Seminary; of Heidelberg Uni-
versity, where he took the degrees
of A.M.and Ph.D.; anda student also
of the Universities of Paris and Rome.
He speaks four or five languages, reads as many more,
and his specialties are philosophy and history. The
study of nature and animal life is to him purely a recrea-.
tion in a life of constant hard work; and it must be
admitted that he brings to this study a rare training. If
his observations are unusual, so also are his qualifica-
tions and opportunities. For over twenty
years he has spent part of each season, sum-
mer or winter, deep in the woods. Some-
times he has lived in the wilderness alone
for months at a time; again he follows his
animals with Indian hunters whose whole
lives have been studies of the natural and
animal worlds.

Mr. Burroughs, who denies Dr. Long’s
observations, has spent his life largely on
the farm. Of the great wilderness and
of the animals among whom Dr. Long is
most at home, he has until recently had
no direct knowledge or personal experi-
ence. His observations of the smaller
Ni animals and birds of the farm are accu-
rate and excellent ; but there is absolutely
nothing in these observations to preclude
the possibility or even the probability of
those recorded by Dr. Long. It is pass-
ing the bounds of criticism, as well as of
reason, to say that what one observer sees
on his farm in New York must limit what another
observer may see in the Maine wilderness — especially
when one remembers the fact that is emphasized by
most modern observers, namely, the individuality of
every animal of the higher orders, which gives him
habits more or less different from every other individual
of the same species.

4

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

From Our Animal Friends, August, 1903
Sa Pe

HEN Mr. John Burroughs writes of something
that he knows, Mr. Burroughs writes instruct-
ively and delightfully, —so charmingly indeed

that it is a thousand pities he should ever write about
things of which he knows a good deal less than he
fancies. Mr. Burroughs is a gentleman who started
life under heavy educational dis-
advantages which it has been his
great merit to overcome to a con-
siderable extent. He has acquired,
for example, a correct and even
graceful style of writing English,
though it is not free from curious
solecisms; but when he sets him-
self up as a critical appraiser of
“literary values,” his judgments
are worth just as much and just
as little as those of any other man
of like attainments. Just so, when
Mr. John Burroughs tells what he
himself has seen in his observa-
tions of nature, he easily commands the attention of
his readers, and no one thinks of doubting his veracity ;
but when Mr. Burroughs undertakes to ridicule the
observations of other men not less veracious than
himself, and gives no better reason for his rude denials
than that John Burroughs does not happen to have
seen the same things, then the reasoning of John Bur-
roughs is ridiculous and his attacks on other men are
indecent....

...It is only fair, however, to quote what Mr. Bur-
roughs himself says on this point: “If it be urged
that I discredit Mr. Long’s stories simply because I
myself have never seen or known the like, I say no;
that is not the reason. I can believe many things I
have never seen or known. I discredit them because
they are so widely at variance with all we know”—
that is, all that Mr. Burroughs knows — “of the wild
creatures and their ways. I discredit them as I do any

5

Mr. Long bringing home a captured bear. [From a
photograph. ]

It has been Mr. Long’s habit, for many years, to spend a part
of each season deep in the woods —sometimes alone, at other times
with Indian hunters. Recently he has been exploring exhaustively
the unknown interiors of Newfoundland with the special purpose
of studying a species of gray wolf which has never been described.

6

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

other glaring counterfeit, or any poor imitation
of an original, or as | would discredit a story
of my friend that was not in keeping with
what I knew of his character.” That is
pretty extravagant talk; but to what, after
all, does it amount? To this only: that no
observation in natural history is to be believed
if it happens to be at variance with what we
have already learned. In other
words, according

to Mr. Burroughs’ ONS
amazing concep- ak ees
tion of science, € ip =
. . & ly Ke
nothing in nature Sn Rigel
is to be believed A an
unless we know &§ at
it already! : wo fin,
We have no 34 *®& es
é-s \ Ni yfitiy
doubt that Mr. jf ,
. i\ 5 “n
Burroughs will oF oye! (ae é

discover that his hee
savage attack on
Mr. Long has left
Mr. Long uninjured, while it has done himself some
damage in the estimation of men whose good opinion
is worth having; and we sincerely regret that he should
have fallen into so unpleasant a blunder.

From The Ypsilantian, July 16, 1903

Cine 2 of nature study who read in the
Atlantic Monthly Mr. John Burroughs’ sweeping
and somewhat dogmatic criticism of the animal
studies of Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton, Rev. W. J.
Long, and others, must have felt there was a good
deal to be said on the other side. Indeed, Mr. Long
has already said something in the Morth American
Review, and Mr. Seton will probably take care of his
end of the controversy when occasion calls for it. For
Mr. Burroughs, delightful essayist and out-of-doors
companion as he is, is by no means infallible as a

7

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

naturalist, nor has he learned, from modern laboratory
methods, not to cover with some general term like
“instinct” a field of activities which promises large
results to the really scientific investigation.

It is not so very many years since
he took James Russel! Lowell to task,
in Scribner's Monthly, for representing
dandelions and buttercups as blooming
together, and his tone was quite as posi-
tive and as self-assured as in his recent
‘critique. Yet the poet was the better
pathralet of the two, for he knew about the species
known as the “ early buttercups,” while Mr. Burroughs,
with surprising provincialism, seemed to suppose that
the term “buttercups”’ was limited to Raxunculus acris,
a summer-blooming species. Mr. Burroughs seems to
ignore the limitations of negative testimony, and even
his admirers must admit that his contemptuous and
sweeping denial of the conclusions of other observers
who differ with him, and especially his insinuations as
to their accuracy and veracity, are neither scientific
nor, to put it mildly, exactly nice.

From The New England Journal of Education,
June 18, 1903

R. LONG has promptly and completely won a
place in the hearts of the people. Wild animals,

among whom he lived by the month, loved and
trusted him, but no more than the
humans for whom he wrote. From
Thoreau to Burroughs there has been
no man quite so lovable to wild ani- /
mals and to men at the same time /
as William J. Long. His experiences
are well-nigh as fascinating in their
way as were the songs of Jenny Lind.
But Mr. Long and his admirers had a rude awaken-
ing. There has been nothing quite so startling, almost

8

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

shocking, as the Aé/antic article by John Burroughs,
in which he dealt with Mr. Long and other modern
nature students cruelly. We have had our time of
swinging in the hammock and absorbing nature and
human nature from “ Wake Robin” and “ Pepacton,”
“ Riverby” and “Signs and Seasons.” I recall espe-
cially with what delight I read his “ Bird Courtship ”
and similar revelations of the things he could see that
I could not. John Burroughs had become a saint
along with Emerson and Thoreau, only he was not
translated.

No one who has not made a saint of Burroughs, and
has not been in love with William J. Long, can appre-
ciate the nightmare effect of that A¢/antic article.

In this happy phrase Mr. Long recalled his lovers
to his side: “. . . in this tempest of which I was the
unwitting cause, and of which I am the
wondering and unwilling center.” After
that suggestion of the effect of the shock
upon himself, we had a keen appetite for
a new book from his pen. And the title!
just the one we wanted, just the one
that showed that he was not in the least
cowed or soured by the experience, —
“Wood Folk at School!”

There is now no spell of sentiment.
The bloom has gone, and it is the com-
radeship of confidence and respect, the
ruddy glow of health.

What is it in William J. Long that can stand such
an attack from a great master? It is the genius, un-
approached by any other popular writer, by which he
weaves the individuality and instinct of wild animals
without sacrificing either to the other. No other has
developed such power to make instinct and individ-
uality the warp and woof of a perfect design... .
William J. Long is the one student of nature whose
reverence for animal instinct never deserts him, and with
whom it never dims the eye to every charming personal
trait. A deer is always true to his inheritance, and yet
no deer was ever just like any other, any more than any
two beautiful women or noble men are ever alike.

9

1Q

[From a photograph. ]

Woods.

Inc

he Ma

S camps in t

One of Mr. Long’

Characteristic Replies to Mr. Burroughs

I have taken an afternoon off, reading once more
‘thestayivcot the Honey Bee,” “The Invitation,”
“The Tragedies of the Nests,” and “Glimpses of
Wild Life,” that I might make sure that I still loved
John Burroughs, and then I read “ Wood Folk at
School.” You try it sometime. Read Burroughs at
his best for an hour or two, and then read William
J. Long, and you will understand why Burroughs
cannot read William J. Long with any patience, and
you will not love either the less, and you will surely
appreciate the matchless insight of Mr. Long into the
lives of wood folk.

II

APPRECIATIONS OF MR. LONG
AND -ELIS= WORK

From The Boston Transcript

THE WORK OF WILLIAM J. LONG
BY RICHARD BURTON

HE nature and animal sketches
of William J. Long have a
worthy part in a tendency of
recent literature which is at
once welcome and significant.
The beast epic, so called of
scholars, has a long and honor-
able lineage in prose and poetry.
Ever since “sop —and indeed
before that Eastern masterpiece

got itself into print—the animal had a place in the
imaginative depiction of life in letters, and has been
used for purposes of instruction quite as much as for
the amusement to be derived from such a piquant
motif. Reynard the Fox—the German Reinecke
Fuchs — may be mentioned as a type of the treatment
of the beast in allegory by the older writers; and in the
hands of masters like La Fontaine or Goethe, our
older brothers the beasts have become an integral and
well-loved section of folklore and later poetry. The
naive handling of this sympathetic subject in our day
by Joel Chandler Harris, whose “ Br’er Rabbit ” is so
dear to the properly reared modern child, is the out-
growth of a vast amount of literature like to it, at
least, in respect that the animals are the persons of
the play instead of human beings.

But with the incoming of the scientific age and the
general acceptance of the principle of evolution to
explain the progressive manifestations of life upon the
broad surface of Mother Earth, —as well as in the vital
air and under the waves of Father Ocean, — there has
naturally come a changed attitude toward the animal
existence below and before man in the great story of
biologic development. Man has drawn closer to brute

12

A small reproduction of a full-page illustration by Mr.
Charles Copeland in Mr. Long’s latest book, ‘‘ A Little
Brother to the Bear.”

13

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

life in sympathy and love, realizing the ties that bound
him to these humble, elder folk of God; a fellow feeling
has made him wondrous kind. Hence he has fallen
into the habit of speaking of his “little brothers of
the air and field,” and, led both by the instinct for
knowledge — the true scientific curiosity
—and the impulse of interested affection,
he has studied his animals as they were
never studied before; and so has come
to be familiar not alone with their man-
ner of life, their nature, habits, and mean-
ing in a universe of sentient things, but
has even tried, with some success, to put himself in
their place, to look at life — their precious birthright
along with ours — through their own eyes. This is the
head mark of the modern and most recent interpreta-
tion of animal nature at the hands of the group of
writers who have done so much to make popular this
fascinating field of letters.

A great impulse toward this study in literary interpre-
tation indubitably came from Kipling by his famous
Jungle books and later studies of animal life. He set
the seal of his genius upon this endeavor, carrying
on the older idea of the beast epic with this striking
shift in view point: the beast speaks for his own side
and treats man critically, just as man has so long been
treating the beasts. There is thus added an immense
ethical meaning in the Jungle tales. If allegories, they
are allegorical in a new, deeper, and finer sense than
ever was Afsop. Various writers
have, each according to his partic-
ular interest, taking the cue from
Kipling, made their contributions
to this most stimulating theme.
Thompson Seton has delighted
thousands by his combination of
picture and text. Birdlore has been
brought into our homes by Burroughs and a vigorous
band of followers. And later, poet naturalists like
Charles G. D. Roberts have added their quota to
the wholesome whole. In verse, Bliss Carman’s lyric
appeal is largely that of nature conceived as responsive

14

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

and close akin to man, and this lends a certain attract-
ive atmosphere of glamour and mysticism to his song.
A writer of spiritual import, like Dr. Van Dyke, has
now and again in essay or short story shown a beauti-
ful sympathy for this aspect of the breathing world
of nature.

The time was ripe for a public reception of this sort
of literature, and its recognition
was correspondingly quick and
hearty. Looking with a careful
eye upon American literature of
the present moment, it can be said
with little fear of cavil that no ten-
dency is more indicative of the
time spirit; none offers a more
hopeful sign of both present and
future than this of the spreading of
nature study, animate and inani-
mate. It is a noble part of that I’
slow widening of the interests and
sympathies of man which Tenny- HK
son dreamed of in one of his most
splendid poems.

The share of William J. Long PS
in all this deserves most cordial recog. 4 fpr 7%
nition. In the first place, he is a true
naturalist, a scientist in quest of knowl- oe a i bu
edge. Year after year he fares to the north- doy
ern streams and forests to study animals in
their haunts and habitats, and in such books
as “ Fowls of the Air,” “ Beasts of the Field,” 6 v)

and the just issued “School of the Woods,” a )
trilogy of volumes in which his distinctive work (
has been gathered, he has given to the world the

result of his long and loving observation. Not for an
instant is he asentimentalist; his purpose is not to make

a pretty story. Some, to whom the weasel of song and
story, for example, is a graceful, charming creature, may
oe pained by his chapter on “ Kagax the Bloodthirsty,”
wherein that incredible little butcher is limned in his
true light and color. Yet that essay, sternly insistent
on fact as it is, nevertheless is a prose idyl, the work

B5

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

of a poet; all the fear, tragedy, and depredation of the
wood are imaginatively set forth with the touch of a
true romanticist. One is enlarged in soul by reading
it. Dr. Long is just as surely poet
as scientist.

He gives the animals he describes
their quaint Indian names, and his
love for them throbs through every
line and picture. He sees them
sympathetically as well as analyt-
ically, and constantly reveals his
sense of beauty by his description
of “that great good place, out-
doors,” in which they move and
have their being. He tells it all
in a style admirable for simplicity, lack of strain or
strut, picturesqueness, and artistic restraint. A quiet
and most enjoyable humor plays through his writings,
furnishing foil and relief. A sense of the dramatic,
too, is present when occasion calls. At times he pre-
fers to put a poetic impulse into
verse form instead of prose, and
readers of 7he Outlook and other
periodicals are aware how well
he carries out this desire.

Hamilton Wright Mabie,
Associate Editor of the
Outlook

Mi WILLIAM :
Ji: ILOINGaisza Ze
lover of wild _ ees :

life whose reports of “7*- >

what goes on in earth

and air are fresh, vital, and picturesque. He has evi-
dently been abroad at all hours and has surprised
beasts and birds in their most unguarded moments.
In “ Fowls of the Air” and “ Beasts of the Field” the
out-of-doors world seems to live in all its multiform

16

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

and hidden activities. Mr. Long has a fresh, sincere
style, an eager curiosity, and a trained habit of obser-
vation, and he writes with unaffected skill.

From The Christian Register,
Boston, Mass., December
28, 1899

R. LONG believes in the
individuality of the wild

eyeatures. He tells of
asking a little child once how she
knew her own little chicken from twenty others in the
flock just like him. ‘ How do I know my chicken?
Why, I know him by his little face!’”? And, sure
enough, the face was quite different. So Mr. Long’s
advice is, no matter how well you know the ways of
crows, for instance, to watch the first that comes in
your way quite as if he were an entire stranger; and
you will surely find some new thing, some unrecorded
way, to give you fresh interest in them. This eager
spirit of the investigator goes through all the chapters.

William Lyon Phelps, Professor of English Litera-
ture in Yale University

HAVE read Mr. Long’s books with close atten-

tion, and they seem to me remarkable productions.

His powers of observation are extraordinary; the
simplicity of his style exhibits artistic powers of a high
order; and his sympathy with animals is shown in a
beautiful way. From the point of view of natural
history, as well as that of literary art, these books are
masterpieces.

From The New York Tribune

E know of no other student of animal life who
has shown for the creatures of the forest such
loving sympathy, such intuitive appreciation of

17

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

_———__—_—_—.

their characters, customs, and instincts. He is the
friend of beast and bird and his methods of observa-
tion are as gentle as they are searching; he has,
moreover, that spirit of patient reverence, that ardent
interest without which the scientific investigator is a
mere Dryasdust.

From The Boston Herald, August 9, 1903

ae BS TEALING away to watch

. Wat G the things that lived in the

qe woods formed the supreme
eA Wi. delight of Dr. Long’schildhood,and
HT ~ before he was twenty he had filled

A A\ | a dozen notebooks with curious,
hitherto unrecorded habits of ani-
mals, — not with any intention of
future use, however, or of writing
on nature, for he was, and is still,
intent upon books of an entirely
different order. But while at
Andover the crass ignorance of
certain nature articles aroused his
determination to write something
on animals which should simply
tell the truth.

He prepared five articles, largely
in fun, which, to his surprise, found
ready acceptance and yielded a
check of astounding proportions.
Requests for book material fol-
lowed, which he has since supplied at the rate of one
or two books a year.

Dr. Long is nature’s true lover before he is her his-
torian. He never seeks exact facts, never studies con-
sciously. As he puts it, “I just love her, give myself
wholly to her influence, expect nothing —then she
gives everything.” All his studies are made from life.
In summer, and frequently in winter, he goes deep into
the wilderness of Maine or of Canada, generally in
Newfoundland, where he follows the animals continu-
ally, to see how they live and what they do. Often he

18

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

prowls all night, or lies in his canoe, or uses his
“jack” on dark nights, just as he did when a boy,
from pure love.

The distinct individuality of each bird or beast
forms the basis of all his work. He never describes
them in classes, simply because no two are alike... .

Dr. Long’s hardest work comes in the
verification of his own discoveries, for
he is the most conscientious of writers,
positively refusing to write an observa-
tion until he has confirmed it by records
of other naturalists, or by reliable testi-
mony. Asaresult, his notebooks contain
descriptions of hundreds of rare animal
habits that he has seen but never written
about, simply because of his inability to
find other naturalists or woodsmen who
have witnessed the same thing.

Sara A. Hubbard in The Dial,
September 16, 1901

HAT is there of promise in a yy

boy who idles away all the time
he can steal from home and books and health-
ful play to sit like a stock or a stone for hours together
watching the strange ways of the frogs and the ducks,
the otter and the musquash, that haunt the brook or
the lake and hide their life from all but the
most patient of prying eyes; or who wanders
through the woods and remote by-places to
come silently upon the wild folk dwelling
' there and win them to friendly confidence
or startle them into a betrayal of their best
kept secrets? What profit is there in a
man who spends weeks of winter and sum-
mer in the heart of the wilderness, alone
an ie rod and gun, an Indian guide at hand for
camp service and timely help at need, but living under
a separate roof, while the hunter paddles his bark
canoe on solitary waters or travels on snowshoes

19

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

weary miles in the track of the moose, the deer, and
the caribou? Open one of the little books that have
been recently produced by Mr. William J. Long, and
you will find a gracious answer to these questions.
There are three of these books, cheap in price and
unpretentious, yet neat and attractive in every detail.
First comes “ Ways of Wood Folk,” then “ Wilder-
ness Ways,” and lastly “ Secrets
of the Woods.” More charm-
ing entertainment for readers of
varied tastes has seldom been
provided within book covers.

ve i) (9) The author has made wonder-
Mis ~ yy Wd / ful use of his opportunities for
( JAN yy iA iv nature study. One would sup-
(i by yy pose from his intimate knowl-
at edge of birds and beasts that

his whole time must have been
given to a study of them. But
he is college bred; this we learn
from indirect statements. That
he is a man of fine culture, his
style attests. It is flowing,
graceful, and well suited to con-
vey the stores of curious infor-
mation with which his books
abound: ee.

Much has been made of
Thoreau’s intimacy with wild
animals, but his experience pales
in comparison with that related
by Mr. Long. With as keen a
fondness for nature as Thoreau
possessed, this later investigator
has a tenderer feeling for his own and for inferior
races, which gains our regard as it does that of the
secluded, suspicious tenants of the wilderness. He
stops and studies until he understands them, and they
respond trustfully to his tactful sympathy... .

It is a service to the public to present books of
such high quality in such inexpensive form as these.
They are educational in a high sense; and it is a

we =!

20

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

pleasure to know that more of them may be looked
for from the same genial hand.

From Our Animal Friends, August, 1901
NN
' are heartily glad to welcome a book on

natural history which tries to tell the truth,

and not to cover it up with a mass of mawkish
sentimentalism. A great many goody-goody books of
the natural history kind have been published
lately, and they have been doing a consider- \
able amount of harm by making the impres- a
sion that the love of animals is not a rational \
sentiment, but is founded, to a large extent,
on silly pretense. There is any amount of Mh
harm in the making of that impression. All
animals are not lovely either in form or in
any other respect. The hippopotamus, for
example, is certainly not a beauty; the skunk
is not a desirable neighbor; the weasel is the
most ferocious, bloodthirsty, and wastefully
murderous little wretch that ever slew its own kin,
murdered a score of domestic fowls in a hencoop, or
throttled as many more brooding birds, all in the
course of a single night’s amusement. You may not
love the owl nor care to make a pet of him, but you
are ready to forgive his faults when you learn that he
has dined upon a weasel. The most foolish thing that
can be done, and it has been done extensively of late,
is to try to invest wild animals with all the virtues of a
lofty human civilization. The love of a human mother
is a lifelong principle as well as an instinctive affection ;
the love of a bear, or a fox, or a weasel for its young is
purely instinctive, and as soon as the young are able
to go alone, the wild parents drive them mercilessly
away, never again to recognize them as their offspring.
Since that is the fact, it is worse than folly to teach
children the contrary. Children ought to be taught
nothing but the truth; and they ought to be taught
the lesson of mercy to animals, wild and tame, not
because of fictitious virtues which those poor creatures
cannot have, but just because they are poor creatures

2I

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

to whom mankind owes a duty of humanity. Mr. Long
knows wild animals with personal acquaintance, and he
writes about them as he personally knows them, not
as sentimentalists misrepresent them.

From The School World, London, England,
February, 1900
A le is a gratifying sign of the times that both in this

country and America such successful efforts are
being made to familiarize young people with the
beauties and wonders of natural objects. But it would
seem that we have much to learn in this direction, as
in so many
pos others, from
; aot American edu-
smth £ @u=2 cators. Mr.
Se Pena 4 aE, AS Long’s book
Tet! es
: i ee will prove
nothing short
of fascinating to those boys and girls who are for-
tunate enough to get hold of it. After reading his
twenty-six short pages on ‘‘ Fox-Ways,” to take only
one example, one’s ideas concerning Reynard undergo
a complete change. [ven if we continue to regard him
as sly and not aboveboard in all his actions, a pro-
found respect for his marvelous resourcefulness and
quiet, gentlemanly way of carrying out his somewhat
shady designs is sure to result from an acquaintance
with his biography as written by Mr. Long. Speaking
personally, the consequence of our introduction by this
author to the crows and the hornet (despite its love
for strong drink) is that we have developed a human
interest in both of them,— Mr. Long makes them
appear so much like ordinary mortals.

Appreciations of Mr. Long cnd his Work

From The Boston Advertiser,
July 20, 1903

of quality for this series of animal
studies, —the book of the deer.
Despite the strictures of very crit-
ical critics, his studies of beasts of
the field and fowls of the air are
generally accepted as the testimony
of a keen veteran, rarely endowed with capacity to con-
vey from his printed page the wood spell felt by every
wanderer in the forest.

In this little volume, strongly illustrated by Charles
Copeland, he tells the story of his first deer hunt in
the Maine woods, when he learned to appreciate the
cunning and splendid courage of the buck, and the
treasured lesson of a dewdrop splashed from a leaf at
daybreak; the testimony of crushed flower, broken
brake, or bended grass blade, and the counsel of birch
bark with a shred of deer velvet clinging to it.

From The Christian Adococate

HESE books are, in
| our judgment, by far

the best animal books
which have yet appeared. ...
From cover to cover they are packed with incident
and keen observation and the curious ways of bird
and beast.

Only a deep love of nature and a lifelong training
could produce such a book. The author is full of his
subject to his finger tips. Whether calling the chick-
adees among the pines of a New England farm, or calling
bull moose in the heart of a Canada forest, the writer is
among his own people. He knows the wood folk, and
they evidently know him. He is a naturalist, hunter,
poet, nature lover, all in one. His descriptions are

23

Appreciations of Mr. Long and his Work

nnn nnn UL EEEEEEEEEESEEe?

marvels of terse, vivid English. Now you are watch-
ing with him by moonlight, deep in the wilderness;
now catching your breath at a daring experiment,
or a touch of hairbreadth adventure which reveals the
man’s absolute fearlessness; and again finding your
eyes moist with sudden sympathy at Merganser’s devo-
tion to her little ones. And all this is told with the
most charming simplicity and directness, as if he were
doing the most natural thing in
the world in being in the wilder-
ness alone at midnight, or splash-
ing an enraged moose, or freezing
at a beaver hole, or just sitting
still an hour to find out what his
beloved wood folk are doing.

From Public Opinion, July 9,
1923

E take this opportunity of
@ reaffirming our belief in
the correctness of Mr.
Long’s theories and of again ad-

vising the study of this author’s
work.

From The Independent, De-
cember 18, 1902

N his ‘School of the Woods” Mr. William J.
Long has given us a sympathetic study of animal
* life. His observations, as recorded in his happily
named volume, have shown him that wild animals teach
their young the simple arts, if we may use such a term,
whereby they become fitted to live after the fashion of
their kind. ... The glimpses of animal life in Mr.
Long’s book cover a wide range, and are indicative
of the most careful observation, not only of our com-
mon birds and fishes but also of the wood and forest
animals.

24

~ LETTER FROM MR. LONG

In a personal letter regarding the contro-
cersy with Mr. Burroughs many interesting
truths were told by Mr. Long, and his position
was possibly more strongly expressed than it
has been in the published articles. Mr. Long
has gicen his permission to reproduce the
personal letter sent to the editor of the “ Con-
necticut Magazine’’ directly following Mr.
Burroughs’ attack.

THANK you heartily for the kindly spirit of your

letter and editorial (see page 2) and for the cour-

tesy which submits the latter to me before publica-
tion. I could wish that your contemporary, which first
published Mr. Burroughs’ attack, had been governed by
a like courtesy and consideration.

Mr. Burroughs falls into a very natural
mistake in his criticism, —the mistake of a
man who assumes final authority in a matter
of which he has not sufficient knowledge.
I say this advisedly; for, notwithstanding
Mr. Burroughs’ observations on the farm, and
his nature book, which I read with delight and
to which I give full measure of praise, all
our animals and birds differ widely in habits
and intelligence, and no man has sufficient knowledge
of any class of animals to affirm or deny absolutely
what other animals of the same class will do in a dif-
ferent locality under different circumstances. Curiously
enough his mistake and spirit are precisely those of
the New England theologians following Calvin’s good
example. They discovered a certain amount of truth
undoubtedly. Then they built a fence around it; called
it a creed; limited the divine wisdom and ordination to
their own small horizon ; and sent all those to endless

25

A Letter from Mr. Long

perdition who dared to
see the truth differently
\ iC and without the fences.
One expects more free-
dom in nature than in the-
ology; but, spite your eyes
and experience, to set an
intelligent animal down as
‘ a creature of mere habit
and instinct — instinct
that has no increase, and
habit that knows no mod-
ification — and to limit
what the bear can do in
Canada by what one has
seen the rabbit do in West
Park, that=sur ely sme
bondage of the letter
such as Edwards never
approached. 2. «
Unfortunately this is
not the first time that Mr.
Burroughs has expressed

“eames meu are

ee WE B
. I i, ac ao rm ) aes) S se
‘ae ty
< | ue ’ LS VAN :
‘ S\N)

himself in print with
less courtesy and
“a, accuracy than we
could wish to see.

: Some of us remem-

*% ber his controversy

, anent the classics

A Letter from Mr. Long

with Maurice Thompson, a gentleman, a scholar, and
a rare naturalist. But to pass over that in which the
personal element entered too strongly and in which
knowledge on one side found itself opposed to dog-
matism on the other, I recall his cutting criticism of
Lowell and Bryant in Scribner's Monthly
(December, 1879). For instance —and this
is but one of many points —he criticised
Lowell for having buttercups and dande-
lions bloom freely together, a thing to be
seen in a hundred meadows. As it turned
out he had never seen and did not even
know the species of buttercup that grows
here. In the Adlantic Monthly (March,
1880), Thomas Wentworth Higginson showed the
extreme inaccuracy and arrogance of this whole
CRILICISIN...°<

The black bear of Florida differs widely in habits
from his brother of the Mississippi cane swamps, and still
more widely in habits and disposition from the animal
of the Canada wilderness. The panther of Colorado
is afraid of the smallest of dogs; the panther of north-
ern New Hampshire and the Adirondacks will kill the
biggest of them without provocation. The salmon of
the east coast tastes no food for months after entering
fresh water; the salmon of the west coast is a vora-
cious feeder. For thirty years I have heard the robin’s
song — every note and variation of it. Yet last sum-
mer in the Maine woods Mr. Pearl Young, a well-known
guide, and myself spent an hour trying
to find a rare wild singer that neither
of us had ever heard before; and
when we found him he was a common
robin.

Mr. Burroughs denies that a porcu-
pine ever rolls himself into a ball.
That may possibly be true of the
porcupines that he has seen. Here the porcupine has
no longer any natural enemies that he is afraid of,
and there is no need of the habit. In the wilderness
I have found them when I had to poke them witha
stick, so closely were they rolled, before I was sure

27

A Letter from Mr. Long

where the head and tail were. Neglect of this habit
cost the life of one porcupine that I have seen. It
was in deep, soft snow. A fisher attacked the por-
cupine, which struck his head against a log and kept
his tail flat to the ground, ready to strike. The fisher
tunneied deep in the snow, passed under
the tail and body of the porcupine, stuck
his head out of the snow under the por-
cupine’s throat, gripped him, and killed
him without receiving a single barb.

Mr. Burroughs will call this a lie
because he has not seen it. Fortunately
Mr. Young, the guide referred to, once
saw the same thing in a different locality.

The critic accuses Mr. Seton of deliberate falsehood
and misrepresentation. While I differ radically from
Mr. Seton in many of his observations and theories of
animals, my notes, covering a period of twenty years
of close watching of animals, bear out some of the
things which Mr. Burroughs assures us are pure inven-
tions. The fox, for instance, that deliberately led the
hounds in front of a train is ridiculed as a piece of pure
absurdity. Yet two dogs of mine were killed by the
same fox in this way at different times, and a third in
a way much more remarkable. There was also a fox
in West Upton, Mass., in the winters of 1887-1890
that would play around the hills until he heard the
hoot of a distant train, when he would lead the hounds
straight for the railroad tracks. He succeeded in kill-
ing one of them, at least, to my own s
knowledge.

Mr. Burroughs is quite as far astray
about the fox in many other partic- &
ulars. Heclaims that a fox knowsa & By on'y,
trap by inherited knowledge. Now @Se**
a fox is like a caribou in that he u®*
believes only his nose. When he avoids a trap it is
not because he knows it 1s a man’s invention, but for
exactly the opposite reason, namely, that it has a smell
on it that he does not know. Put the same trap in
shallow running water to take away the unknown smell,
put a bit of green moss from a stone upon it, and a

28

A Letter from Mr. Long

fox will put his foot into it without a question. He
claims also that a fox in the wilderness knows as much
as in a settled community. That must be @ priori
knowledge, for he has certainly never tried the wilder-
ness fox. Personally, I have trapped foxes in both
places and I have invariably found that the wilderness
fox is an innocent when compared with his brother of
the settlements. And this, contrary to Mr. Burroughs’
absolute decree, is the
result of teaching and
experience.

Mr. Burroughs denies
absolutely the story of
the fox that brought
poison to her young.
There is a difficulty in
that story which I hope
some day to have Mr.
seton ex-
plain; but Pe ;
Mr. Bur- ye
roughs does “es
not discover f* -
it. Yet most Ji RL
of it is true
to both fox and wolf natures as I know
them. Mr. Richard Maddox, an Eng-
lish gentleman who has hunted each
year for over twenty years in the Cana-
dian Rockies and in Ontario, told me
that a mother wolf brought poison to
her two cubs that were kept chained on
his ranch and killed them both in pre-
cisely this way.

Mr. Burroughs treats my own books, and especially
my “ School of the Woods,” with even less courtesy.
He denies the facts absolutely because he has not seen
them on his farm, and therefore they cannot be true.
He also denies the theories. There is absolutely no
such thing as an animal teaching her young — “ there

is nothing in the dealings of an animal with her young
that in the remotest way suggests human instruction.”

29

A Letter from Mr. Long

Teaching is not primarily instruction, by the way. It
is not giving something new to the young animal or
boy, but rather an inducement bringing out what is
already in him. This is the theory of all good teachers

from Froebel to the Boston super-

fo visors. But let that pass. How any

.. man could watch the mother birds
Ss ’ and animals for a single season, to
say nothing of fifty years, and write
that statement passes my comprehen-
sion. In my notes are a hundred
instances to deny it (and my notes
were not intended to be published

e when they were written), but, lest my own
Py witness should be cast out, let me bring in
is & two others on a single subject... Anna Bots-
eT ford Comstock, who is one of our best and

most careful naturalists, tells of a cat that
learned to open a door, and taught two out
of her litter of kittens to do the same thing.
Rev. Magee Pratt of Hartford, formerly lit-
erary editor of the Connecticut Magazine, who is an
authority on horticulture, had a cat that learned from
a dog to sit up on her hind legs and beg food. She
taught four out of five kittens to do the same thing.
I could quote a hundred other instances, in both wild
and domestic animals, and show the same thing.

Mr. Burroughs’ whole argu-
ment in this connection misses
the point altogether. He tells SS
us what animals do by instinct ane”
(though he i Peery a

gh he is vastly mistaken «1
in saying that young birds build
their nests as well as old ones)
and says simply that this is
enough. “school otathe
Woods” does not deny
instinct, — I have watched the ant and the bee and the
water spider too long for that, —it shows, and conclu-
sively I think, that instinct is not enough. Foran ani-
mal’s knowledge is, like our own, the result of three
factors: instinct, training, and experience. Instinct

30

wae

de
.

by
i
Dil

; SN fy
Alla DY 8 INK :

A Letter from Mr. Long

begins the work (for the lower orders this is enough),
the mother’s training develops and supplements the in-
stinct, and contact with the world finishes the process.

“A wild animal is a wild animal as soon as it is born,
and it fears man and its natural
enemies as soon as its Senses are Sy
developed,” he writes. But all
our domestic animals were wild
yesterday ; how, then, are they
now tame? Young fawns when
found in the woods just after birth have no
fear of man; how does fear come? The
Arctic animals had no fear of the first
explorers; now they are wild; whence this
change? Here are two animals, an otter
and a fisher; both belong to the weasel
family, and in a general way are alike. The
first is gentle and harmless to all animals ;
the second is a savage and persistent hunter.
Now, without the mother’s influence and
teaching how shall the young grouse know,
as they soon do know, which of these ani-
mals to avoid and which to ignore?

Again he says, “‘ Let a domestic cat rear
its kittens in the woods and they are at once
wild animals.” That depends entirely on the
cat. Let a motherly old tabby drop her
kittens anywhere, and at your approach she
will rub against your legs, and the kittens
will be like her. Let a half-starved wild
creature drop her kittens in the same spot,
and she will fight at your approach, and the
kittens will show the same wildness.

Not only have I watched these animals
myself, but I have taken infinite pains to
compare my observations not with the books but with
the experience of trappers and Indians who know far
more of animal ways than the books have ever pro-
vided; and I have heard from old Indians whose
lives have been spent in the woods, stories of animal
cunning and intelligence beside which my own small
observations seem very tame and commonplace.

31

A Letter from Mr. Long

You know the wonderful things that your own par-
ticular dog will do? That is not because he is more
intelligent than all other dogs, but simply because you
have watched him more and know him better. You
would find much more wonderful things of the wolf
and fox could you but watch them with the same
thoroughness and sympathy. For these wild animals
are not spoiled by men; and they are in every way
more cunning and individual animals.

Your editorial is quite right when it intimates that
I may by further observation modify my theories of
animal education and psychology. That is what I am
doing all the time. Meanwhile the facts remain as I
have recorded them, and every modification must be
the result of more facts. And I shall probably continue
to watch animals for myself and believe my own eyes
and ears rather than listen to the voice of authority in
these matters; for otherwise of what use is it either
to watch or write?

With kindest regards, very sincerely yours,

W. J. Lonc, Stamford, Conn.

32

A List of Mr. Lona’s Books

WITH PRICES

ARM

List

SCHOOL EDITIONS

Ways of Wood Folk . . . . .« $0.50
Wilderness Ways... 355 0+ a) eS
eeereis of the Woods. . . . . .§0
Wood Foltat School .... .§50

TRADE EDITIONS

The Trade Editions of Mr. Long’s books may
be obtained from dealers or from Ginn @
Company’s Boston Office, 29 Beacon St.

Ways of Wood Folk .

Wilderness Ways

Secrets of the Woods. . -

Wood Folk at School .. .

Beasts of the Field . «6 « « 695

Fowls of the Air .:. 2. 2 0 «© 75

Beasts of the Field and Fowls of the Air,
neatly boxed together, $3.50.

School of the Woods . . . net 1.50
Following the Deer . . . net 1.25
A Little Brother to the Bear net 1.50

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