title. The introductory words suggest the
essence of the book:

In New Mexico whatever is both old and peculiar appears upon examination
to have a connection with the arid climate. Peculiarities range from the
striking adaptations of the flora onward to those of fauna, and on up
to those of the human animal. Sky determines. And the writer once
having picked up the trail followed it with certainty, and indeed almost
inevitably, as it led from ecology to anthropology and economics.

Cultivated intellect is the highest form of civilization. It is
inseparable from the arts, literature, architecture. In any civilized
land, birds, trees, flowers, animals, places, human contributors to
life out of the past, all are richer and more significant because of
representations through literature and art. No literate person can
listen to a skylark over an English meadow without hearing in its
notes the melodies of Chaucer and Shelley. As the Southwest advances
in maturity of mind and civilization, the features of the land take on
accretions from varied interpreters.

It is not necessary for an interpreter to write a whole book about
a feature to bring out its significance. We need more gossipy
books--something in the manner of _Pinon Country_ by Haniel Long (Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, New York, 1941), in which one can get a swift slant on
Billy the Kid, smell the pinon trees, feel the deeply religious attitude
toward his corn patch of a Zuni Indian. Roy Bedichek's chapters on the
mockingbird, in _Adventures with a Texas Naturalist_, are like rich talk
under a tree on a pleasant patch of ground staked out for his claim by
an April-voiced mockingbird. In _The Voice of the Coyote_ I tried
to compass the whole animal, and I should think that the "Father
of Song-Making" chapter might make coyote music and the night more
interesting and beautiful for any listener. Intelligent writers often
interpret without set purpose, and many books under various categories
in this _Guide_ are interpretative.

3. General Helps

THERE IS no chart to the Life and Literature of the Southwest. An
attempt to put it all into an alphabetically arranged encyclopedia would
be futile. All guides to knowledge are too long or too short. This one
at the outset adds to its length--perhaps to its usefulness--by citing
other general reference works and a few anthologies.

_Books of the Southwest: A General Bibliography_, by Mary Tucker,
published by J. J. Aug