then, of the doubtful sense or intelligence of the wild
creatures, what shall we say of the new school of nature writers or
natural history romancers that has lately arisen, and that reads into
the birds and animals almost the entire human psychology? This,
surely: so far as these writers awaken an interest in the wild
denizens of the field and wood, and foster a genuine love of them in
the hearts of the young people, so far is their influence good; but so
far as they pervert natural history and give false impressions of the
intelligence of our animals, catering to a taste that prefers the
fanciful to the true and the real, is their influence bad. Of course
the great army of readers prefer this sugar-coated natural history to
the real thing, but the danger always is that an indulgence of this
taste will take away a liking for the real thing, or prevent its
development. The knowing ones, those who can take these pretty tales
with the pinch of salt of real knowledge, are not many; the great
majority are simply entertained while they are being humbugged. There
may be no very serious objection to the popular love of sweets being
catered to in this field by serving up the life-history of our animals
in a story, all the missing links supplied, and all their motives and
acts humanized, provided it is not done covertly and under the guise
of a real history. We are never at a loss how to take Kipling in his
"Jungle Book;" we are pretty sure that this is fact dressed up as
fiction, and that much of the real life of the jungle is in these
stories. I remember reading his story of "The White Seal" shortly
after I had visited the Seal Islands in Bering Sea, and I could not
detect in the story one departure from the facts of the life-history
of the seal, so far as it is known. Kipling takes no covert liberties
with natural history, any more than he does with the facts of human
history in his novels.

Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover
craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the
reality. Then, to know that a thing is true gives it such a savor! The
truth--how we do crave the truth! We cannot feed our minds on
simulacra any more than we can our bodies. Do assure us that the thing
you tell is true. If you must counterfeit the truth, do it so deftly
that we shall never detect you. But in natural history there is no
need to counterfeit the truth; the reality always suffices, if y