FRECKLES, one of her best-known works, had its beginning when Mrs. Porter saw a beautiful black vulture feather fall from the sky. Accompanied by her husband, she traced it to a nearby nest in a hollow log in the swamp and began the very disagreeable task of surveying the scene. However, perseverance and disregard for the presence of the foul-smelling carrion on which the vulture fed, enabled them to observe and photograph the nesting of these creatures through the incubation period to the final emergence of the young from the shell. The book intertwined this episode with the life of a Scotch logger, a great deal of wood lore, and the epochal character of Freckles. It was published amid great acclaim in 1904, and during the next ten years, sold 670,733 copies. Eventually sales reached more than a million copies in America and five hundred thousand in Great Britain. The popularity of FRECKLES was so great that Mrs. Porter published a sequel to it in 1909, GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. This work, illustrated by one hundred pictures, gave her world fame. Again, nature lore supplements the story in a most unique fashion. LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL accepted articles on birds in 1904 and 1905, for by this time Mrs. Porter was an accepted writer for the masses. Her novels included a great deal of nature lore. This proved rather unpalatable to some at first, but eventually was accepted as Mrs. Porter’s way. This was the period of deep and abiding interest in nature writings stimulated by Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, John Burroughs, Ernest Seton Thompson, and Luther Burbank. Their works, together with the new interest in the conservation of natural resources, gave the literature of nature a continuing impetus. Mrs. Porter’s writing was a thread in this substantial pattern. AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW, issued in 1909, had a balanced ration of nature lore and romance. BIRDS OF THE BIBLE, also published in 1909, was a very scholarly work and required a great deal of research. It was by no means decisively popular, but is interesting and replete with illustrations—some of which were collected abroad with painstaking care. About this time Mrs. Porter was employed as a contributor to INTERNATIONAL BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA. For four years, she also served as specialist in natural history and photography on PHOTOGRAPHIC TIMES ANNUAL. While making photographs of birds in the spring of 1910, Mrs. Porter became interested in their music, calls, and sounds; the result was MUSIC OF THE WILD. She dedicated this book to her husband’s brother, Dr. Miles Porter, then a physician in Fort Wayne.