Mrs. Porter does not put money first, nor anywhere near first. “When the public had discovered her and given generous approval to _A Girl of the Limberlost_, when _The Harvester_ had established a new record, that would have been the time for the author to prove her commercialism by dropping nature work, and plunging headlong into books it would pay to write, and for which many publishers were offering her alluring sums. Mrs. Porter’s answer was the issuing of such books as _Music of the Wild_ and _Moths of the Limberlost_. No argument is necessary.” No argument is possible. Mrs. Porter has spent a great deal of the small fortunes her novels have brought her on nature books which represent years of fieldwork and a staggering expenditure for scientific materials. This is Mrs. Porter’s own description of the Limberlost swamp where she has done so much work and which she has made yield such good stories. “‘In the beginning of the end a great swamp region lay in northeastern Indiana. Its head was in what is now Noble and DeKalb counties; its body in Allen and Wells, and its feet in southern Adams and northern Jay. The Limberlost lies at the foot and was, when I settled near it, exactly as described in my books. The process of dismantling it was told in _Freckles_ to start with, carried on in _A Girl of the Limberlost_, and finished in _Moths of the Limberlost_. Now it has so completely fallen prey to commercialism through the devastation of lumbermen, oilmen, and farmers, that I have been forced to move my working territory and build a new cabin about seventy miles north at the head of the swamp in Noble county, where there are many lakes, miles of unbroken marsh, and a far greater wealth of plant and animal life than existed during my time in the southern part. At the north end every bird that frequents the Central States is to be found. Here grow in profusion many orchids, fringed gentians, cardinal flowers, turtle heads, starry campions, purple gerardias, and grass of Parnassus. In one season I have located here almost every flower named in the botanies as native to those regions and several that I can find in no book in my library.