Los Angeles herald., 1907-09-05
NATURE FAKEhS CHAMPION
LIARS, SAYS PRESIDENT
ASSERTS THEY DO NOT MERELY
ERR IN OBSERVATIONS
Roosevelt Again Raps Undesirables OF
the Woods--Hlts Mr.. Long, De-
clarlng Him to Be the
Most Reckless

NEW YORK, Sept. 4.-Ail the CLAIMS IN
Oyster Bay chuckled gleefuHy this morn
ing and down at ~Provincetown on the
end of Cape Cod swordhsh leapeo hlsh
over the bridge of the yacht Mayhower
and winked at a seaman as it passed by,
all because mature fakers' have got 1t
again from the august pen of their presi-
dent A last word on the subject from
oyster Bay has appeared In EVerypouy
Magazine for September. 1t is predicted
that the article will cause the Rev. VIII
liam j. Long and every other unuersira-
BILE naturalist" in the country to go
down in a heap.
President Roosevelt's earlier article on
nature taking aroused heated contro-
versy," the editors of the magazine state.
The president intended to take no part
in this, they add, except to append
note on the subject in a new volume of
his public papers The enticing oppor-
tunity to put in word along with a
proposed symposium of Real Natural
lists on Nature Faking' was too attrac-
tive. however, and hence the signed arti-
Gle which is appended to the symposium
composed by 1.-THE most eminent working
naturalists in America"
The stick which has been laid about
the heads of DR.. Long, Jack London and
others is no new affair, 1t soon appears
from the article. Back in the eighteenth
century a certain Hudson bay explorer
named Samuel dearne spoke out as fol
lows:
When Hearne Protested
''I cannot refrain from smiling when
read the accounts Of different authors
who have written on the economy of
these animals, as there seems to be a
contest between them who shall most ex-
ceed In fiction But the compiler of the
Wonders of Nature and Art seems, in
my opinion, to have succeeded best in
this respect, as he has not only collected
all the flctions into which other writers
on the subject have run, but has so great
ly improved on them that little remains
to be added to his account of the beaver
besides a vocabulary of their language,
a code of their laws and sketch of their
religion, to make 1t the most complete
natural history of that animal which can
possibly be offered to the public"
After reciting list of real naturalists,
of which John Burroughs is placed first,
the article gets down to business and the
stick begins to whistle through the air
again:
"of all these nature takers the most
reckless and least responsible is Mr..
Long; but there are others who run him
close in the yellow journalism of the
woods, as John Burroughs has aptly
called it. 1t would take a volume merely
to catalogue the comic absurdities with
which the books of these writers are
filed. There is no need of discussing
their theories; the point is that their al
legged facts are not facts at all, but
fancies.
Perverson of Facts
Their most striking stories are not
merely distortions of facts, but pure
inventions; and not only. are they in
ventions, but they are inventions by
men who know so little of the subject
concerning which they write. and who
to ignorance add such utter reckless
ness, that they are not even ablelto
distinguish between what is possible,
however wildly improbable, and me-
chanical impossibilities. Be 1t remem-
bered that I am not speaking of or
binary mistakes, of ordinary errors of
observation, of differences of interpre-
tation and opinion; I am dealing only
with deliberate invention, deliberate
perversion of fact"
The wireless expert on the Mayhower
reported at noon that several persons
had called up asking to have their
minds set at rest with regard to the
last words of the preceding paragraph.
All the inquirers were positive that
they had seen the same words some-
where before
sAs for "story-book beasts Presi-