Lazell's delightful essays. He has surely a gift in this sort of
thing. We are grateful to the man who shows us what he sees in Nature,
but more to the man who like our present author shows us how easy and
blessed it is to see for ourselves.

Mr. Lazell reminds me of Thoreau and Emerson, and I can suggest no
better foreword than the passage from the last named author, from the
_Method of Nature_, as follows:

"Every earnest glance we give to the realities around us with intent
to learn, proceeds from a holy impulse and is really songs of praise.
What difference can it make whether it take the shape of exhortation,
or of passionate exclamation, or of scientific statement? These are
forms merely. Through them we express, at last, the fact that God has
done thus or thus."

THOMAS H. MACBRIDE

IOWA CITY, IOWA
OCTOBER 17, 1907




I. THE WOODLANDS IN JANUARY


Humanity has always turned to nature for relief from toil and strife.
This was true of the old world; it is much more true of the new,
especially in recent years. There is a growing interest in wild things