d of
place. This impression is an incorrect one. The cabin is a well-built
two-story structure, its uneuphonious but fitting name having been given
it because its outer walls are formed of bark-covered slabs. "My friends
frequently complain," said Mr. Burroughs, "because I have not given my
house a prettier name, but this name just expresses the place, and the
place just meets the want that I felt for something simple, homely,
secluded--something with the bark on."

Both Gilbert White and Thoreau became identified with their respective
environments almost to the exclusion of other fields. The minute
observations of White, and his records of them, extending over forty
years, were almost entirely confined to the district of Selborne. He
says that he finds that "that district produces the greatest variety
which is the most examined." The thoroughness with which he examined his
own locality is attested by his "Natural History of Selborne." Thoreau
was such a stay-at-home that he refused to go to Paris lest he miss
something of interest in Concord. "I have traveled a good deal in
Concord," he says in his droll way. And one of the most delicious
instances of provinciality that I ever came across is Thoreau's remark
on returning Dr. Kane's "Arctic Explorations" to a friend who had lent
him the book--"Most of the phenomena therein recorded are to be observed
about Concord." In thinking of John Burroughs, however, the thought of
the author's mountain home as the material and heart of his books does
not come so readily to consciousness. For most of us who have felt
the charm, of his lyrical prose, both in his outdoor books and in his
"Indoor Studies," were familiar with him as an author long before we
knew there was a Slabsides--long before there was one, in fact, since
he has been leading his readers to nature for fifty years, while the
picturesque refuge we are now coming to associate with him has been in
existence only about fifteen years.

Our poet-naturalist seems to have appropriated all outdoors for his
stamping-ground. He has given us in his limpid prose intimate glimpses
of the hills and streams and pastoral farms of his native country; has
taken us down the Pepacton, the stream of his boyhood; we have traversed
with him the "Heart of the Southern Catskills," and the valleys of the
Neversink and the Beaverkill; we have sat upon the banks of the Potomac,
and sailed down the Saguenay; we have had a glimpse of the Blue Gra