lands is unsurpassed.

The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the western Catskills, where
the mountains are comparatively gentle in type and always graceful
in contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling to their
mighty slopes far up toward the summits, there are patches of
woodland including frequent groves of sugar maples, and there are
apple orchards and winding roadways, and endless lines of rude stone
fences, and scattered dwellings. In every hollow runs a clear trout
brook, with its pools and swift shallows and silvery falls. Birds
and other wild creatures abound; for the stony earth and the ledges
that crop out along the hillsides, the thickets and forest patches,
the sheltered glens and windy heights offer great variety in
domicile to animal life. The creatures of the outdoor world are much
in evidence, and at no time do their numbers impress one more than
when in winter one sees the hand-writing of their tracks on the
snow.

The work on the farm and the workers are genuinely rustic, but not
nearly so primitive as in the times that Mr. Burroughs most enjoys
recalling. Oxen are of the past, the mowing-machine goes over the
fields where formerly he labored with his scythe, stacks at which
the cattle pull in the winter time are a rarity, and the gray old
barns have given place to modern red ones. It is a dairy country,
and on every farm is found a large herd of cows; but the milk goes
to the creameries. The women, however, still share in the milking,
and there is much of unaffected simplicity in the ways of the
household. On days when work is not pushing, the men are likely to
go hunting or fishing, and they are always alert to observe chances
to take advantage of those little gratuities which nature in the
remoter rural regions is constantly offering, both in the matter of
game and in that of herbs and roots, berries and nuts.

Mr. Burroughs's old home has continued in the family, and the house
and its surroundings have in many ways continued essentially
unaltered ever since he can remember. What is most important--the
wide-reaching view down the vales and across to the ridges that
rise height on height until they blend with the sky in the ethereal
distance, is just what it always has been.

That the Catskills have proved an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs
cannot be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature
writer at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less
favored lo