Audubon, about 1840, projected a more pretentious work on our mammals than Godman's, the text of which was to be prepared by Dr. John Bachman of South Carolina, while Audubon and his son Victor were to draw the pictures on copper. This plan resulted in the publication, in 1847, of "Quadrupeds of North America,"--to this day an important and interesting feature of our scientific libraries. [Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company VIEW OF WALDEN POND FROM EMERSON'S CLIFF] During a subsequent short period almost the only name to be mentioned is that of Henry W. Herbert, a highly cultivated man and the author of many novels and poems; but these are forgotten, while as "Frank Forester," the writer of "My Shooting Box," "Field Sports," and other manuals for young sportsmen, Mr. Herbert lives in the admiring memory of every reading man who enjoys tramping the autumn woods with gun and dog. His descriptions of field sports and rural scenes are so elegantly written, and are so instinct with the inspiration of the meadows and marshes where he loved to roam, that they have rarely been surpassed. [Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company WALDEN POND The cabin site is indicated by the cairn of stones] Theodore Winthrop's "Life in the Open Air," and other books, have a similar quality; nor must we forget N.P. Willis, T.W. Higginson, Starr King, and particularly Wilson Flagg, whose "Forest and Field Studies" came out in 1857. Flagg added later a delightful book, "Birds and Seasons in New England," and had the singular fortune to popularize for a familiar sparrow the name "vesper-bird" in place of its earlier and very commonplace name. [Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company THOREAU'S CABIN AT WALDEN From a drawing by Charles Copeland] Wilson Flagg was one of that circle of writers and thinkers who have made New England, and particularly Concord, so memorable. All of them felt strongly the influence of their rural surroundings. Emerson exhibits it--may be said to have lived "close to Nature" in the sublimest sense of the phrase; one realizes it more distinctly, perhaps, in his poems, but it is to be felt everywhere in his discourses. The same is true of Channing, of Hawthorne, Lowell, and the other essayists and poets in that brilliant company. All loved things out of doors, and communicated to their readers the gracious inspirations they received. [Illustration: From "Walden," by courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company FURNITURE USED IN THE WALDEN HOUSE, MADE BY THOREAU] _Henry D. Thoreau_