"NO MAN," says Mary Austin, "has ever really entered into the heart of
any country until he has adopted or made up myths about its familiar
objects." A man might reject the myths but he would have to know many
facts about its natural life and have imagination as well as knowledge
before entering into a country's heart. The history of any land begins
with nature, and all histories must end with nature.
"The character of a country is the destiny of its people," wrote Harvey
Fergusson in _Rio Grande_. Ross Calvin, also of New Mexico, had the same
idea in mind when he entitled his book _Sky Determines_. "Culture
mocks at the boundaries set up by politics," Clark Wissler said. "It
approaches geographical boundaries with its hat in its hand." The
engineering of water across mountains, electric translation of sounds,
refrigeration of air and foods, and other technical developments carry
human beings a certain distance across some of nature's boundaries, but
no cleverness of science can escape nature. The inhabitants of Yuma,
Arizona, are destined forever to face a desert devoid of graciousness.
Technology does not create matter; it merely uses matter in a skilful
way--uses it up.
Man advances by learning the secrets of nature and taking advantage of
his knowledge. He is deeply happy only when in harmony with his work
and environments. The backwoodsman, early settler, pioneer plainsman,
mountain man were all like some infuriated beast of Promethean
capabilities tearing at its own vitals. Driven by an irrational energy,
they seemed intent on destroying not only the growth of the soil but the
power of the soil to reproduce. Davy Crockett, the great bear killer,
was "wrathy to kill a bear," and as respects bears and other wild life,
one may search the chronicles of his kind in vain for anything beyond
the incidents of chase and slaughter. To quote T. B. Thorpe's blusterous
bear hunter, the whole matter may be summed up in one sentence: "A bear
is started and he is killed." For the average American of the soil,
whether wearing out a farm, shotgunning with a headlight the last doe
of a woodland, shooting the last buffalo on the range, trapping the
last howling lobo, winging the last prairie chicken, running down in an
automobile the last antelope, making a killer's target of any hooting
owl or flying heron that comes within range, poisoning the last eagle to
fly over a sheep pasture for him the circumstances of the killing have
expressed his chief intellectual interest in nature.
A sure sign of advancing civilization has been the rapidly changing
popular attitude toward nature during recent years. People are becoming
increasingly interested not merely in conserving game for sportsmen
to shoot, but in preserving all wild life, in observing animals, in
cultivating native flora, in building houses that harmonize with climate
and landscape. Roger Tory Peterson's _Field Guide to the Birds_ has
become one of the popular standard works of America.
The story of the American Indian is--despite taboos and squalor--a story
of harmonizations with nature. "Wolf Brother," in _Long Lance_, by Chief
Buffalo Child Long Lance, is a poetic concretion of this harmony. As
much at ease with the wilderness as any Blackfoot Indian was George
Frederick Ruxton, educated English officer and gentleman, who rode
horseback from Vera Cruz to the Missouri River and wrote _Adventures
in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains_. In this book he tells how a lobo
followed him for days from camp to camp, waiting each evening for his
share of fresh meat and sometimes coming close to the fire at night. Any
orthodox American would have shot the lobo at first appearance. Ruxton
had the civilized perspective on nature represented by Thoreau and Saint
Francis of Assisi. Primitive harmony was run over by frontier wrath to
kill, a wrath no less barbaric than primitive superstitions.
But the coyote's howl is more tonic than all theories about nature; the
buck's whistle more invigorating; the bull's bellow in the canyon more
musical; the call of the bobwhite more serene; the rattling of the
rattlesnake more logical; the scream of the panther more arousing to the
imagination; the odor from the skunk more lingering; the sweep of the
buzzard in the air more majestical; the wariness of the wild turkey
brighter; the bark of the prairie dog lighter; the guesses of the
armadillo more comical; the upward dartings and dippings of the
scissortail more lovely; the flight of the sandhill cranes more fraught
with mystery.
There is an abundance of printed information on the animal life of
America, to the west as well as to the east. Much of it cannot be
segregated; the earthworm, on which Darwin wrote a book, knows nothing
of regionalism. The best books on nature come from and lead to the
Grasshopper's Library, which is free to all consultants. I advise the
consultant to listen to the owl's hoot for wisdom, plant nine bean rows
for peace, and, with Wordsworth, sit on an old gray stone listening for
"authentic tidings of invisible things." Studies are only to "perfect
nature." In the words of Mary Austin, "They that make the sun noise
shall not fail of the sun's full recompense."
Like knowledge in any other department of life, that on nature never
comes to a stand so long as it has vitality. A continuing interest
in natural history is nurtured by _Natural History_, published by the
American Museum of Natural History, New York; _Nature_, published
in Washington, D. C.; _The Living Wilderness_, also from Washington;
_Journal of Mammalogy_, a quarterly, Baltimore, Maryland; _Audubon
Magazine_ (formerly _Bird Lore_), published by the National Audubon
Society, New York; _American Forests_, Washington, D. C., and various
other publications.
In addition to books of natural history interest listed below, others
are listed under "Buffaloes and Buffalo Hunters," "Bears and Bear
Hunters," "Coyotes, Lobos, and Panthers," "Birds and Wild Flowers," and
"Interpreters." Perhaps a majority of worthy books pertaining to the
western half of America look on the outdoors.
ADAMS, W. H. DAVENPORT (from the French of Benedict Revoil). _The Hunter
and the Trapper of North America_, London, 1875. A strange book.
ARNOLD, OREN. _Wild Life in the Southwest_, Dallas, 1936. Helpful
chapters on various characteristic animals and plants. OP.
BAILEY, VERNON. _Mammals of New Mexico_, United States Department of
Agriculture, Bureau of Biological Survey, Washington, D. C., 1931.
_Biological Survey of Texas_, 1905. OP. The "North American Fauna
Series," to which these two books belong, contains or points to the
basic facts covering most of the mammals of the Southwest.
BAILLIE-GROHMAN, WILLIAM A. _Camps in the Rockies_, 1882. A true
sportsman, Baillie-Grohman was more interested in living animals than in
just killing. OP.
BEDICHEK, ROY. _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, Doubleday, Garden
City, N. Y., 1947. To be personal, Roy Bedichek has the most richly
stored mind I have ever met; it is as active as it is full. Liberal in
the true sense of the word, it frees other minds. Here, using facts as a
means, it gives meanings to the hackberry tree, limestone, mockingbird,
Inca dove, Mexican primrose, golden eagle, the Davis Mountains, cedar
cutters, and many another natural phenomenon. _Adventures with a Texas
Naturalist_ is regarded by some good judges as the wisest book in the
realm of natural history produced in America since Thoreau wrote.
The title of Bedichek's second book, _Karankaway Country_ (Garden City,
1950), is misleading. The Karankawa Indians start it off, but it goes to
coon inquisitiveness, prairie chicken dances, the extinction of species
to which the whooping crane is approaching, browsing goats, dignified
skunks, swifts in love flight, a camp in the brush, dust, erosion,
silt--always with thinking added to seeing. The foremost naturalist of
the Southwest, Bedichek constantly relates nature to civilization and
human values.
BROWNING, MESHACH. _Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter_, 1859;
reprinted, Philadelphia, 1928. Prodigal on bear and deer.
CAHALANE, VICTOR H. _Mammals of North America_, Macmillan, New York,
1947. The author is a scientist with an open mind on the relationships
between predators and game animals. His thick, delightfully illustrated
book is the best dragnet on American mammals extant. It contains
excellent lists of references.
CATON, JUDGE JOHN DEAN. _Antelope and Deer of America_, 1877. Standard
work. OP.
DOBIE, J. FRANK. _The Longhorns_ (1941) and _The Mustangs_ (1952),
while hardly to be catalogued as natural history books, go farther into
natural history than most books on cattle and horses go. _On the Open
Range_ (1931; reprinted by Banks Upshaw, Dallas) contains a number of
animal stories more or less true. Ben Lilly of _The Ben Lilly Legend_
(Boston, 1950) thought that God had called him to hunt. He spent
his life, therefore, in hunting. He saw some things in nature beyond
targets.
DODGE, RICHARD I. _The Hunting Grounds of the Great West_, London, 1877.
Published in New York the same year under title of _The Plains of the
Great West and Their Inhabitants_. Outstanding survey of outstanding
wild creatures.
DUNRAVEN, EARL OF. _The Great Divide_, London, 1876; reprinted under
title of _Hunting in the Yellowstone_, 1925. OP.
ELLIOTT, CHARLES (editor). _Fading Trails_, New York, 1942. Humanistic
review of characteristic American wild life. OP.
FLACK, CAPTAIN. _The Texas Ranger, or Real Life in the Backwoods_,
1866; another form of _A Hunter's Experience in the Southern States of
America_, by Captain Flack, "The Ranger," London, 1866.
GANSON, EVE. _Desert Mavericks_, Santa Barbara, California, 1928.
Illustrated; delightful. OP.
GEISER, SAMUEL WOOD. _Naturalists of the Frontier_, Southern Methodist
University Press, Dallas, 1937; revised and enlarged edition, 1948.
Biographies of men who were characters as well as scientists, generally
in environments alien to their interests.
GERSTAECKER, FREDERICK. _Wild Sports in the Far West_, 1854. A
translation from the German. Delightful reading and revealing picture of
how backwoodsmen of the Mississippi Valley "lived off the country."
GRAHAM, GID. _Animal Outlaws_, Collinsville, Oklahoma, 1938. OP. A
remarkable collection of animal stories. Privately printed.
GRINNELL, GEORGE BIRD. Between 1893 and 1913, Grinnell, partly in
collaboration with Theodore Roosevelt, edited five volumes for The Boone
and Crockett Club that contain an extraordinary amount of information,
written mostly by men of civilized perspective, on bears, deer, mountain
sheep, buffaloes, cougars, elk, wolves, moose, mountains, and forests.
The series, long out of print, is a storehouse of knowledge not to be
overlooked by any student of wild life in the West. The titles are:
_American Big-Game Hunting_, 1893; _Hunting in Many Lands_, 1895; _Trail
and Camp-Fire_, 1897; _American Big Game in Its Haunts_, 1904; _Hunting
at High Altitudes_, 1913.
GRINNELL, JOSEPH; DIXON, JOSEPH S.; and LINSDALE, JEAN M. _Fur-Bearing
Mammals of California: Their Natural History, Systematic Status, and
Relation to Man_, two volumes, University of California Press, Berkeley,
1937. The king, so far, of all state natural histories.
HALL, E. RAYMOND. _Mammals of Nevada_, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1946. So far as my knowledge goes, this is the
only respect-worthy book extant pertaining to the state whose economy is
based on fees from divorces and gambling and whose best-known citizen is
Senator Pat McCarran.
HARTMAN, CARL G. _Possum_, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1952. This
richly illustrated book comprehends everything pertaining to the subject
from prehistoric marsupium to baking with sweet potatoes in a Negro
cabin. It is the outcome of a lifetime's scientific investigation not
only of possums but of libraries and popular talk. Thus, in addition to
its biographical and natural history aspects, it is a study in the
evolution of man's knowledge about one of the world's folkiest
creatures.
{illust. caption = Charles M. Russell, in _The Blazed Trail of the Old
Frontier_ by Agnes C. Laut (1926)}
HORNADAY, WILLIAM T. _Camp Fires on Desert and Lava_, London, n.d. OP.
Dr. Hornaday, who died in 1937, was the first director of the New York
Zoological Park. He was a great conservationist and an authority on the
wild life of America.
HUDSON, W. H. _The Naturalist in La Plata_, New York, 1892. Not about
the Southwest or even North America, but Hudson's chapters on "The
Puma," "Some Curious Animal Weapons," "The Mephitic Skunk," "Humming
Birds," "The Strange Instincts of Cattle," "Horse and Man," etc. come
home to the Southwest. Few writers tend to make readers so aware; no
other has written so delightfully of the lands of grass.
INGERSOLL, ERNEST. _Wild Neighbors_, New York, 1897. OP. A superior
work. Chapter II, "The Father of Game," is on the cougar; Chapter IV,
"The Hound of the Plains," is on the coyote; there is an excellent essay
on the badger. Each chapter is provided with a list of books affording
more extended treatment of the subject.
JAEGER, EDMUND C. _Denizens of the Desert_, Boston, 1922. OP. "Don
Coyote," the roadrunner, and other characteristic animals. _Our Desert
Neighbors_, Stanford University Press, California, 1950.
LOCKE, LUCIE H. _Naturally Yours, Texas_, Naylor, San Antonio, 1949.
Charm must never be discounted; it is far rarer than facts, and often
does more to lead to truth. This slight book is in verse and drawings,
type integrated with delectable black-and-white representations of the
prairie dog, armadillo, sanderling, mesquite, whirlwind, sand dune,
mirage, and dozens of other natural phenomena. The only other book in
this list to which it is akin is Eve Ganson's _Desert Mavericks_.
LUMHOLTZ, CARL. _Unknown Mexico_, New York, 1902. Nearly anything about
animals as well as about Indians and mountains of Mexico may be found in
this extraordinary two-volume work. OP.
MCILHENNY, EDWARD A. _The Alligator s Life History_, Boston, 1935. OP.
The alligator got farther west than is generally known--at least within
reach of Laredo and Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande. McIlhenny's book
treats--engagingly, intimately, and with precision--of the animal
in Louisiana. Hungerers for anatomical biology are referred to _The
Alligator and Its Allies_ by A. M. Reese, New York, 1915. I have more to
say about McIlhenny in Chapter 30.
MARCY, COLONEL R. B. _Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border_, New
York, 1866. Marcy had a scientific mind and a high sense of values. He
knew how to write and what he wrote remains informing and pleasant.
MARTIN, HORACE T. _Castorologia, or The History and Traditions of the
Canadian Beaver_, London, 1892. OP. The beaver is a beaver, whether
on Hudson's Bay or the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. Much has been
written on this animal, the propeller of the trappers of the West, but
this famous book remains the most comprehensive on facts and the amplest
in conception. The author was humorist as well as scientist.
MENGER, RUDOLPH. _Texas Nature Observations and Reminiscences_, San
Antonio, 1913. OP. Being of an educated German family, Dr. Menger found
many things in nature more interesting than two-headed calves.
MILLS, ENOS. _The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Wild Life on the Rockies,
Waiting in the Wilderness_, and other books. Some naturalists have
taken exception to some observations recorded by Mills; nevertheless, he
enlarges and freshens mountain life.
MUIR, JOHN. _The Mountains of California, Our National Parks_, and
other books. Muir, a great naturalist, had the power to convey his wise
sympathies and brooded-over knowledge.
MURPHY, JOHN MORTIMER. _Sporting Adventures in the Far West_, London,
1879. One of the earliest roundups of game animals of the West.
NEWSOME, WILLIAM M. _The Whitetailed Deer_, New York, 1926. OP. Standard
work.
PALLISER, JOHN. _The Solitary Hunter; or Storting Adventures in the
Prairies_, London, 1857.
ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. _Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter_, with a
chapter entitled "Books on Big Game"; _Hunting Adventures in the West;
The Wilderness Hunter; Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail; A Book Lover's
Holiday in the Open; The Deer Family_ (in collaboration).
SEARS, PAUL B. _Deserts on the March_, University of Oklahoma Press,
Norman, 1935. Dramatic picturization of the forces of nature operating
in what droughts of the 1930's caused to be called "the Dust Bowl."
"Drought and Wind and Man" might be another title.
SETON, ERNEST THOMPSON. _Wild Animals I Have Known; Lives of the
Hunted_. Probably no other writer of America has aroused so many people,
young people especially, to an interest in our wild animals. Natural
history encyclopedias he has authored are _Life Histories of Northern
Animals_, New York, 1920, and _Lives of Game Animals_, New York, 1929.
Seton's final testament, _Trail of an Artist Naturalist_ (Scribner's,
New York, 1941), has a deal on wild life of the Southwest.
THORPE, T. B. _The Hive of the Bee-Hunter_, New York, 1854. OP. Juicy.
WARREN, EDWARD ROYAL. _The Mammals of Colorado_, University of Oklahoma
Press, Norman, 1942. OP.