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WILD ANIMALS
OF NORTH AMERICA
INTIMATE STUDIES OF BIG AND LITTLE CREATURES
OF THE MAMMAL KINGDOM
BY
EDWARD W. NELSON
Natural-Color Portraits from Paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes
Track Sketches by Ernest Thompson Seton
PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
WASHINGTON, D. C.
U. S. A.380
Copyright, 1918
BY THE
National Geographic Society
Washington, D. C.
Press of Judd & Detweiler, Inc.
381
INTRODUCTION
In offering this volume of “Wild Animals of North America” to membersof the National Geographic Society, the Editor combines the text andillustrations of two entire numbers of the National Geographic Magazine—thatof November, 1916, devoted to the Larger Mammals of NorthAmerica, and that of May, 1918, in which the Smaller Mammals of ourcontinent were described and presented pictorially.
Edward W. Nelson, the author of both articles, is one of the foremostnaturalists of our time. For forty years he has been the friend and studentof North America’s wild-folk. He has made his home in forest and desert,on mountain side and plain, amid the snows of Alaska and the tropic heatof Central American jungles—wherever Nature’s creatures of infinite varietywere to be observed, their habits noted, and their range defined.
In the whole realm of scientists, the Geographic could not have founda writer more admirably equipped for the authorship of a book such as “WildAnimals of North America” than Mr. Nelson, for, in addition to his exceptionalscientific training and his standing as Chief of the unique U. S. BiologicalSurvey, he possesses the rare quality of the born writer, able to visualizefor the reader the things which he has seen and the experiences which he hasundergone in seeing them. Each of his animal biographies, of which thereare 119 in this volume, is a cameo brochure—concisely and entertaininglypresented, yet never deviating from scientific accuracy.
In Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes, the National Geographic Society hassecured for Mr. Nelson the same gifted artist collaborator which it providedfor Henry W. Henshaw, author of “Common Birds of Town and Country,”“The Warblers,” and “American Game Birds,” all of which were assembledin our “Book of Birds.” In the present instance Mr. Fuertes hasproduced a natural history gallery of paintings of the Larger and SmallerMammals of North America which is a notable contribution to wild-animalportraiture, and the reproductions of these works of art are among the mosteffective and lifelike examples of color printing ever produced in this country.
Supplementing the work of Mr. Nelson and Mr. Fuertes is a series ofdrawings by the noted naturalist and nature-lover, Ernest Thompson Seton,showing the tracks of many of the most widely known mammals.
“Wild Animals of North America” provides in compact and permanentform a natural history for which the National Geographic Society expended$100,000 in the two issues of the Magazine in which the articles and illustrationsoriginally appeared.