True to the facts, Burroughs is a great deal more than scientific, for he loves the things--the birds, hills, seasons--as well as the truths about them; and true to himself, he is not by any means a simple countryman who has never seen the city, a natural idyl, who lisps in books and essays, because the essays come. He is fully aware of the thing he wants to do, and by his own confession has a due amount of trouble shaping his raw material into finished literary form. He is quite in another class from the authors of "The Complete Angler" and "New England's Rarities Discovered." In Isaak Walton, to quote Leslie Stephen, "_a happy combination of circumstances_ has provided us with a true country idyl, fresh and racy from the soil, not consciously constructed by the most skillful artistic hand." Now the skillful artistic hand is everywhere seen in John Burroughs. What writer in these days could expect happy combinations of circumstances in sufficient numbers for so many volumes? But being an idyl, when you come to think of it, is not the result of a happy combination of circumstances, but rather of stars--of horoscope. You are born an idyl or you are not, and where and when you live has nothing to do with it. Who would look for a true country idyl to-day in the city of Philadelphia? Yet one came out of there yesterday, and lies here open before me, on the table. It is a slender volume, called "With the Birds, An Affectionate Study," by Caroline Eliza Hyde. The author is discussing the general subject of nomenclature and animal distribution, and says: "When the Deluge covered the then known face of the earth, the birds were drowned with every other living thing, except those that Noah, commanded by God, took two by two into the Ark. "When I reflect deeply and earnestly about the Ark, as every one should, thoughts crowd my mind with an irresistible force." [And they crowd my mind, too.] "Noah and his family had preserved the names of the birds given them by Adam. This is assured, for Noah sent a raven and a dove out to see if the waters had abated, and we have birds of that name now. Nothing was known of our part of the globe, so these birds must have remained in the Holy Land for centuries. We do not hear of them until America was discovered.... "Bats come from Sur. They are very black mouse-like birds, and disagreeable.... The bobolink is not mentioned in the Bible, but it is doubtless a primitive bird. The cock that crows too early in the morning ... can hardly be classed with the song-birds. The name of the humming-bird is not mentioned in the Bible, but as there is nothing new under the sun, he is probably a primitive bird."