human basis common to both. Fiction supplies an element of
culture,--that of the sympathies, which is invaluable. And the beginnings
of this culture, this widening and clearing of the avenues of human
sympathy, are especially easily made with children in the nature story.

When you begin, "There was once a little furry rabbit,"[1] the child's
curiosity is awakened by the very fact that the rabbit is not a child,
but something of a different species altogether. "Now for something new
and adventuresome," says his expectation, "we are starting off into a
foreign world." He listens wide-eyed, while you say, "and he lived in a
warm, cosy nest, down under the long grass with his mother"--how
delightful, to live in a place like that; so different from little boys'
homes!--"his name was Raggylug, and his mother's name was Molly
Cottontail. And every morning, when Molly Cottontail went out to get their
food, she said to Raggylug, 'Now, Raggylug, remember you are only a baby
rabbit, and don't move from the nest. No matter what you hear, no matter
what you see, don't you move!'"--all this is different still, yet it is
familiar, too; it appears that rabbits are rather like folks. So the tale
proceeds, and the little furry rabbit passes through experiences strange
to little boys, yet very like little boys' adventures in some respects; he
is frightened by a snake, comforted by his mammy, and taken to a new
house, under the long grass a long way off. These are all situations to
which the child has a key. There is just enough of strangeness to entice,
just enough of the familiar to relieve any strain. When the child has
lived through the day's happenings with Raggylug, the latter has begun to
seem veritably a little brother of the grass to him. And because he has
entered imaginatively into the feelings and fate of a creature different
from himself, he has taken his first step out into the wide world of the
lives of others.

[Footnote 1: See _Raggylug_, page 135.]

It may be a recognition of this factor and its value which has led so many
writers of nature stories into the error of over-humanising their
four-footed or feathered heroes and heroines. The exaggeration is
unnecessary, for there is enough community of lot suggested in the
sternest scientific record to constitute a natural basis for sympathy on
the part of the human animal. Without any falsity of presentation
whatever, the nature story may be counted on as a help in the begi