The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-03-16

literary controversy is contained in d
recent magazine article by Mr.. John
Burroughs on real and false natural
history. The writers who have gone
into the field of nature are legion, but
Mr.. Burroughs takes up only very
few of the most successful, judged from
the sales of their books. To the sur
condemnation for the most successful
of all, Mr.. Thompson Seton. The vet
cram poet of nature, whose magma
ton must be powerful, says that Mr..
Seton has surpassed all the other
writer's in imaginative literature about
animals. Mr.. Burroughs has studied
life in the woods and in the open for
many years and he is unable to discov-
er the remarkable human intelligence
which Mr.. Seton represents in his
book. wild Animals Which l Alone
Have Known" is the revised title
which Mr.. Burroughs applies to the
best known book of that author.
MIR. Thompson Seton says in capital
letters that his stories are true" writes
Mr.. BurroughS in the Atlantic Month
ly, and it is this emphatic assertion
that makes the judicious grieve. True
as romance, true in their artistic eff
fects, true in their power to entertain
the young reader, they certainly are;
but true as natural history they as
certainly are not. Are we to believe
that Mr.. Thompson Seton, in his few
years of roaming in the West, has pen
etrated farther into the secrets of ami
NAL life than all the observers who
have gone before him? There are no
stories of animal intelligence and cum
ming on record, that 1 am aware OF,
that match his. Gilbert White, Charles
st. John, Waterloo, Wallace, Darwin,
Jefferies, and others in England-all
expert students and observers; Bates in
South America, Audubon roaming the
whole country, Thoreau in New Eng
land, John Muir in the mountains of
California and in the wilds of Alaska
have nothing to report that comes
within gunshot of what appear to be
Mr.. Thompson iSetons daily exper-
| fences. Such dogs, wolves, foxes, rab-
bits, mustangs, crows, as he has
known, it is safe to say, no other per-
son in the world has ever known. Fact
and fiction are 50 deity blended in his
work that only real woodsman can
separate them. For instance, take his
story of the fox. Every hunter knows
that the fox, when pursued by the
hound, will often resort to devices that
look like cunning tricks to confuse and
mislead the dog. How far these de-
vices are the result of calculation we
do not know, but hunters generally
look upon them as such. Thus a fox
holly pursued will run through a flock
of sheep. This dodge probably delays
the hound little, but it does not often
enable the fox to shake him. Mr..
Thompson Seton goes several better,
nd m q lraG hie foX ha 10 lr
of sheep and ride several hundred
yards. OF course no fox ever
did that. Again, the fox will some
time take to the railroad track, and
walk upon the rail. doubtless with the
vague notion of eluding his pursuers.
Mr.. Thompson Seton makes his fox
so very foxy that he deliberately lures
the hounds upon the long trestle where
he knows they will be just in time
to meet and he killed by passing
train, as they are. The presumption
is that the fox had a watch and O.
timetable about his person. But such
are the ways of romancers. The incl
dent of the mother fox coming near
the farmhouse at night to rescue. her
young, and, finding him held by a
chain, digging a hole and burying the
chain, thinking she had thus set him
free, is very touching and pretty. and
might well be true. But, finding her
self unable to liberate her offspring,
that she should then bring him poison,
is pushing the romantic to the absurd.
In all the animal stories of Mr..
Thompson Seton that 1 have read the
same liberties are taken with facts
In his story of the rabbit, Raggylug,
he says: Those who do not know the
animals well may think l have hui
manized them, but those who have
lived so near them as to know some
thing of their ways and their minds
will not think So" This is the old
trick of the romancer; he swears his
tale is true, because he knows his
reader wants this assurance; 1t makes
the thing taste better But those who
know the animals are just the ones
Mr.. Thompson Seton cannot fool"
Mr.. Burroughs is rather severe.
There are thousands of admirers of
Mr.. Seton who have not minded being
deceived. They were delighted with
the stories and they have had aroused
more interest in natural history and
sympathy for the animals of the wild
For the animal story books of
Charles G. d. Roberts and William
Davenport Hubert, Mr.. Burroughs has
the highest praise.
Mr.. Frank L. Mason whose END of
the Trail attracted so much atten-
ton last year, Is coming Western
writer. His Blue Goose" just pub
lished seems likely to eclipse his for
mer success. 1t is story of mining
camps in the Rockies, country in
which the author has made his home
for years. Mr.. Mason is now In New
York city hard at work on a third
Western novel, which will be brought
out next year.
A tempest in a teapot was started
the other day by one of the New York
newspapers which came out with the
glazing headline announcement that
James Weber Linns last novel was an
attack on John D. Rockefeller. THE
Chameleon" as the book is called, tells
of the mastery of a very wealthy man
obtained over a college by giving it
several millions of dollars. Now Mr.
Linn is a professor in Chicago Univer-
sity, and at once, an imaginative re-
porter jumped to the conclusion that
the author was picturing Mr.. Rookie
Teller in his story. AS a matter of
fact, there is no foundation for the
newspaper story, yet 1t is likely to
cause the author of the novel some
trouble. Mr.. Rockefeller is suspicious
particularly just now that Miss Tar
bell is showing up his business life
so mercilessly in her great series of
articles on the Standard Oil, and he
may desire Mr.. Linn's dismissal from