Mr. Seton works as hard in building some simple thing for a game for a boys' camp as in seeking facts about Nature or planning a house. But above all he likes to personalize the animals, the birds, the trees, the winds and the seasons with his pen and in his talks about Nature. And because he loves and understands them he makes them real to others, so that they love them too. Some of the books that have carried his name wherever Nature literature has readers are, besides those already mentioned: "The Biography of a Grizzly," "Lobo, Rag and Vixen," "Lives of the Hunted," "Drag and Johnny Bear," "Animal Heroes," "Biography of a Silver Fox," "Rolf in the Woods," and "Wild Animals at Home." THE MENTOR · DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE SERIAL NUMBER 181 AMERICAN NATURALISTS By ERNEST INGERSOLL _Author of "Nature's Calendar," "Wild Life of Orchard and Field," "Wild Neighbors," "Art of the Wild," "Animal Competitors," and other Nature Books._ [Sidenote: _MENTOR GRAVURES_ JOHN J. AUDUBON J. LOUIS RODOLPHE AGASSIZ HENRY DAVID THOREAU JOHN MUIR JOHN BURROUGHS ERNEST THOMPSON SETON] [Illustration] [Illustration: Photograph by Press Illustrating Service, Inc. JOHN BURROUGHS AT THE DOOR OF "SLABSIDES" His study on the hill above his home at West Park, New York] In the sense of its attractive description and interpretation, as distinguished from its coldly scientific study, the literature of natural history in the United States is a modern development. Americans were intensely engaged in the earlier years of their history in practical affairs. A large proportion of them were pioneers who were too much occupied in subduing the wilderness and its harmful denizens to civilized purposes to be interested in its beauties. Undoubtedly there were "Nature lovers" even then. The poetry of James Hillhouse (1754-1832), and the fact that he set out the trees that brought New Haven fame as the "Elm City," prove him to have been a Nature lover; but the class of readers now known by that title is, like the phrase itself, of very recent growth. [Endnote: Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the post office at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1919, by The Mentor Association, Inc.] _Alexander Wilson_