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BIRDS AND BEES, SHARP EYES AND OTHER PAPERS, John Burroughs, introduction by Mary E. Burt, hardcover, 1887. ITEM CONDITION: fair. The text block is in good condition with no dog-ears or marks, but the lower half of the title page is missing. The pages are age-toned. There is no bookplate, but the inked stamp and written name of a school are on the first free endpaper. The cloth boards are in fairly good condition (bumped corners and spine, library label on spine). 7 x 4 ¾, 184 pages, 13 ounces. XX Contents: Biographical sketch of John Burroughs, introduction by Mary E. Burt, Birds (Bird Enemies and the Tragedies of the Nests), Bees (An Idyl of the Honeybee and The Pastoral Bees), Sharp Eyes, The Apple, A Taste of Maine Birch, Winter Neighbors, Notes by the Way (The Weather-Wise Muskrat, Cheating The Squirrels, Fox and Hound, The Woodchuck). XX [Wikipedia] John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 ? March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the conservation movement in the United States. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs' special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of "a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world." The result was a body of work whose resonance with the tone of its cultural moment explains both its popularity at that time, and its relative obscurity since. XX Many of Burroughs' essays first appeared in popular magazines. He is best known for his observations on birds, flowers and rural scenes, but his essay topics also range to religion, philosophy, and literature. Burroughs was a staunch defender of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but somewhat critical of Henry David Thoreau, even while praising many of Thoreau's qualities. His achievements as a writer were confirmed by his election as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Some of Burroughs' essays came out of trips back to his native Catskills. In the late 1880s, in the essay "The Heart of the Southern Catskills," he chronicled an ascent of Slide Mountain, the highest peak of the Catskills range. Speaking of the view from the summit, he wrote: "The works of man dwindle, and the original features of the huge globe come out. Every single object or point is dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is only a wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover with a feeling of surprise that the great thing is the earth itself, which stretches away on every hand so far beyond your ken.".
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