While you are finding out who Mr. Torrey is and what he has written, you should also get acquainted with John Burroughs, Olive Thorne Miller, Thoreau, Frank Bolles, William Hamilton Gibson, C. C. Abbott, Edward Breck, Gilbert White, and—but these will do for this fall. Don’t fail to read dear old Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne”; though perhaps we grown-ups like it better than you may this fall. If you don’t understand Gilbert White, then read this year “The Life of a Scotch Naturalist” by Samuel Smiles, and Arabella Buckley’s two books, “Life and Her Children,” and “Winners in Life’s Race.”
IX
You ought to tie up a piece of suet for the birds; keep your cat in the house, except during the middle of the day, and—but I shall tell you no more. There is no end to the interesting things to do in your study of the out of doors and in your tramps afield this autumn.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MUSKRATS ARE BUILDING
WE have had a week of almost unbroken rain, and the water is standing over the swampy meadow. It is a dreary stretch,—this wet, sedgy land in the cold twilight,—drearier than any part of the woods or the upland pastures. They are empty; but the meadow is flat and wet, it is naked and all unsheltered. And a November night is falling.