a plan of
the day or bound on an expedition covering half the year. Its species would
have been plain to them at half a glance, and its scientific name would
have replaced the vague designation of "waterfowl." Its life, habits and
habitat winter and summer, would have unrolled before them, and the
dogs-eared and rain-stained note-book sprung open for a new entry. The
poet, on the other hand, got happily home without injury to his health (for
he is still hale half a century after the fact), lit the gas, nibbed the
quill pen of the day, and sent down to us what must be confessed a
pleasanter memorandum than we should have had from the forest-students.
These, brave and ardent fellows! have long been asleep beneath the birds.

Mr. Burroughs is half poet, half naturalist in his way of looking at
Nature, and steers clear of the poetic vagueness in regard to species. A
passing description of the brown thrush as "skulking" among the bushes hits
that bird to the life. Some remarks on page 119 would seem to be applied by
a slip of the pen to the crow blackbird, instead of the cowbird, which has
always enjoyed the distinction of being the only American species that
disposes of its offspring after the fashion of the cuckoo and Jean Jacques
Rousseau. The chapter on Emerson contains some acute remarks, but the
warmest tribute to Emerson is the book itself, in which that writer's
influence is everywhere patent both in style and thought. Mr. Burroughs has
a happy facility of expression, and could well afford by this time to
discard the Emersonian props and stand on his own merits.

The Life of Edgar Allan Poe. By W.F. Gill. Illustrated. New York:
Dillingham.

Griswold's memoir of Poe has been actually beneficial to the reputation of
its subject, contrary to its obvious design. It has caused a thorough
sifting of all accessible records of the poet's short and dreary life, and
elicited many reminiscences from men of mark who were in one way or another
personally associated with him. We know now, more certainly than we might
have done but for Griswold's effort to prove the opposite, that Poe was not
expelled in disgrace from the University of Virginia, but bore himself well
there as a student and a man; that he deliberately went to work and
procured his being dropped from the rolls of West Point by building up with
venial faults the requisite sum of "demerits," after having repeatedly and
in vain sought permission to withdraw from the