The Outdoors / Wildlife Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt to Naturalist John Burroughs

“In the course of many expeditions to, and much time spent in regions where our American lynxes of different kind were found – both lucivees and bob cats – and after puzzling over hundreds of their trails in the snow, and watching and sometimes shooting and hounding the animals, have never seen anything that remotely suggested courses of conduct like those”

No U.S. president is more popularly associated with nature and wildlife than is Theodore Roosevelt – life-long naturalist, prodigious hunter, tireless adventurer, and visionary conservationist. As president, Roosevelt provided federal protection for almost 230 million acres of land, an area equivalent to the entire Eastern Seaboard from Maine to Florida. He initiated the U.S. Forest Service, and sat aside 150 national forests; he signed the Antiquities Act and pursuant to it created the first 18 national monuments, including the Grand Canyon and Muir Woods; an ardent ornithologist, he set up the first 51 federal bird reservations; he named five national parks, and added lands to a sixth – Yosemite; by executive order he established the first four national game preserves, including the National Range; and the instituted first 24 reclamation, or federal irrigation, projects. As a naturalist crusader, TR’s impact went far beyond the simple accomplishments; it resulted in changing the way people thought about the need to preserve America’s natural treasures.

Nature was Theodore Roosevelt’s first passion. Long before he considered a career in politics, he had a fascination with the natural world and thought he would be a naturalist. His father, one of the founders of New York City’s Natural History Museum, encouraged his son’s curiosity. It was on a summer trip to the country that five year old TR began to hunt for plants and animals to study. At the age of seven, he began his career as a zoologist. As he recalled later, it all started when he was walking up Broadway and saw a dead seal which raised questions in the young boy’s mind: Where had it been caught, how long was it, what species of seal was it? He managed to acquire the seal’s skull, the first specimen in what he called the “Roosevelt Museum of Natural History.”

It was around this time that the young TR started to write natural history essays, which are the first examples of serious scientific scholarship on his part. At age nine he wrote his first long-form essay, “The Natural History of Insects.” This essay shows the observation and extraordinary memory for details that would be hallmarks of Roosevelt as a politician later in life. The area of zoology which interested him the most was ornithology. The family’s trip down the Nile in 1872 provided the fourteen year old Roosevelt with a unique opportunity. He approached the trip as an official scientific expedition for the collection of specimens for the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History. With his sister, TR prowled the shores of the Nile, observing and hunting its fowl (in fact, it was his desire to collect specimens that led to his interest in hunting). Often, he ventured further inland from the shore and the result was his essay, “Ornithology of Egypt Between Cairo and Aswan”. Roosevelt begins his essay by describing the unique ecosystem of the Nile and then launches into a detailed look at the nine “true desert birds.” He pays particular attention to coloration and daily behaviors of each species of bird and tries to compare the birds both to what he has read about them and to other birds he knows. Roosevelt continued his natural history “hobby” throughout his life, writing articles and participating in debates even during his presidency. His two best known expeditions, Africa and South America, were both sponsored scientific expeditions that, in addition to affording TR an opportunity to hunt and obtain specimens for his own collection, gathered valuable natural history data for some of the world’s most prominent museums, including the Smithsonian Institution. So as happens sometimes, the youthful passions of one individual can result in the creation of some truly wonderful things. Roosevelt was a passionate hunter. He loved the thrill of tracking and chasing game, the skill in marksmanship, the careful and deliberate recording of his observations about each hunt, the demanding preservation of specimens, and the pleasure of capturing in rich and vibrant language this ephemeral experience so that he could share it with the world. Roosevelt was well acquainted with the noted naturalists of the time. In 1903, he went with John Muir to Yosemite, camping and posing for pictures on Overhanging Rock at the top of Glacier Point . He had written Muir, “I want to drop politics absolutely for four days and just be out in the open with you.”

John Burroughs contributed to the American understanding of nature through his large literary output, which included works about Henry David Thoreau, and his friend Walt Whitman, whom he admired. In 1903, Burroughs published an article in The Atlantic Monthly that challenged the sentimental and improbable characterizations of animals then being published by those he termed “nature fakers.” A battle lasting half a decade ensued as naturalists sided with Burroughs or with those he criticized. Roosevelt felt as Burroughs did. In April 1903, the two men toured Yellowstone Park together and Burroughs wrote about it in Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt, published in 1906. In planning the two-week trip to the park, he had written Burroughs, “For the last 18 months I have taken everything as it came, from coal strikes to trolley cars, and I feel I am entitled to a fortnight to myself.”  TR arrived in time to set the Roosevelt Arch’s cornerstone in a grand ceremony. In 1907 Roosevelt publicly entered the nature-fakers controversy when he gave an interview and circulated an article defending Burroughs and stating his own views. Roosevelt esteemed Burroughs and called him Oom John (the Roosevelts were of Dutch extraction), an affectionate term meaning “uncle” in Dutch. John Burroughs continued to correspondent with TR for years.

1) TR on the Hunting Behavior of Big Cats: The Lynx and Bobcat

“In the course of many expeditions to, and much time spent in regions where our American lynxes of different kind were found – both lucivees and bob cats – and after puzzling over hundreds of their trails in the snow, and watching and sometimes shooting and hounding the animals, have never seen anything that remotely suggested courses of conduct like those.”

Typed letter signed, January 2, 1904 – “…Under exceptional and fortuitous circumstances two or three cats of any species might for the moment join in a common assault upon some prey. But in the course of many expeditions to, and much time spent in regions where our American lynxes of different kind were found – both lucivees and bob cats – and after puzzling over hundreds of their trails in the snow, and watching and sometimes shooting and hounding the animals, have never seen anything that remotely suggested courses of conduct like those Long describes. They do not hunt in bands; they hunt separately. They do not follow the trail of game as wolves and foxes do, though they may occasionally follow a fresh trail for a comparatively short distance. They occasionally why lie in wait, but they are much more apt to stall their prey, rambling about through the woods until they see or smell it and then creeping up to it. I do not believe that a lynx or any other animal of the cat kind ever allured a caribou fawn or any other animal to its death in the way Long describes, and I have never seen or known of a trustworthy hunter who did see a party of lynxes act as he describes that party of lynxes acting as they crossed the country. However, I must now return to Panama and kindred subjects and leave lucivees, bob cats, etc., for a year to come.”

2) Theodore Roosevelt Reflects on the Evolutionary Advances of Humans

“Wide and deep though the gulf is between even the lowest man and an anthropoid ape or some carnivore as intelligent as a dog, there are in both the latter animals and in a good many other higher animals intellectual traits and (if I may use the word very loosely) moral or ethnical traits, which represent embryonic or rudimentary forms of such intellectual and moral traits of our own, and perhaps prefigure them, just as the little skin-covered bony knobs or knob-like epidermal growths on the heads of the animals which, ages ago, were the ancestors of the doer, the antelope, the rhinoceros of to-day, prefigured the extraordinary horn and antler growth of the existing forms.”

Typed letter signed, May 29, 1905. “… I have nothing to suggest except a slight toning-down of your statement as to the effect from the protective standpoint of the mother-bird’s indistinct coloration. It is, as you point out, well-nigh impossible to say with our present knowledge exactly what effects such things have on the life of the species; yet I am strongly inclined to believe that the coloration of the mother in the case of certain ground-breeding birds, where this coloration blends with the dead leaves and soil, is of benefit. In some species the cock-bird takes part in incubating. I wonder whether this is the case as often where the cock bird is brightly colored as where he is dull colored?

“…Some of the closest observers I know – men like Hart Merriam, for instance – feel that animals do teach their young in certain cases and among the higher forms, and feel very strongly that the higher mammals, such as dogs, monkeys, wolves, foxes, and so forth, have mental faculties which are really far more akin to those of man than they are to the very rudimentary faculties out of which they wore developed in the lower forms of life. I am inclined to sympathize with both of these views myself. I think there has been preposterous exaggeration among those who speak of the conscious teaching by animals of their young but I fool that the balance of proof certainly is in favor of this being at least occasionally true. I believe it would be very valuable if we could get observations to show its frequency, and the kind of animals in which it occurs. So it is with mental processes. Man, and the higher anthropoid apes, for instance, have developed from ancestors which in the immemorial past possessed only such mental attributes as a mollusk or crustacean of today possesses. For reasons which we may never know, man, perhaps some time in the Quaternary period – or some time before – began to advance in extraordinary fashion. Yet wide and deep though the gulf is between even the lowest man and an anthropoid ape or some carnivore as intelligent as a dog, there are in both the latter animals and in a good many other higher animals intellectual traits and (if I may use the word very loosely) moral or ethnical traits, which represent embryonic or rudimentary forms of such intellectual and moral traits of our own, and perhaps prefigure them, just as the little skin-covered bony knobs or knob-like epidermal growths on the heads of the animals which, ages ago, were the ancestors of the doer, the antelope, the rhinoceros of to-day, prefigured the extraordinary horn and antler growth of the existing forms. Of course my comparison is not meant to be accurate. The distance traveled in our case has been immeasurably greater, and the make-believe out-of-door observers who read human emotions and thoughts into all kinds of birds and mammals deserve the most severe chastisement, and I fool that you rendered a really great service by what you did in reference to them; but all I moan is that I would be careful not to state my position in such extreme form as to let them shift the issue to one in which they will have very excellent observers on their side. I am aroused at your falling foul of Hudson, that Englishman who writes of South America. I happened to study what he said of the cougar, and became convinced that now and then his romances wore as wild as those of Long himself…”

3) TR Relishes a Bear Hunt, and Wishes Burroughs Had Been There. He Wants to Dedicate His Book, “Outdoor Pleasures of an American Outdoorsman,” to Burroughs, Which He Did

“I wish you could have been along on our bear hunt. I think the coyote hunt would have had too much rapid galloping and too little walking to suit you.”

 Typed letter signed, May 17, 1905 – “I wish you could have been along on our bear hunt. I think the coyote hunt would have had too much rapid galloping and too little walking to suit you. But on the bear hunt I longed for you all the time.” He adds in holograph, “When I publish my hunting book, with all these chapters in it, I wish to dedicate it to you; do you object?”

4) Roosevelt Notes the Evolutionary Development of Animal and Human Behavior

“I should be surprised to find that the salamander or the herring ever in any shape or way did anything that remotely resembled teaching its offspring. On the other hand, I should be rather surprised if it proved true that the higher monkey did not occasionally teach its offspring on some point or other in a way analogous — even if somewhat remotely analogous — to the way in which a Bushman teaches his or her offspring.”

Typed letter signed, August 1, 1903. “… Is it not possible that emotion and knowledge are not yet clearly differentiated in the brute mind? Don’t you think that we are apt to lump all animals together, as opposed to many in a very unwarranted way? Profound though the gulf is between the highest monkey and the highest man. I think the gap between the highest monkey and an African Bushman is in all respects far less than that between the same monkey and the herring. I should be surprised to find that the salamander or the herring ever in any shape or way did anything that remotely resembled teaching its offspring. On the other hand, I should be rather surprised if it proved true that the higher monkey did not occasionally teach its offspring on some point or other in a way analogous — even if somewhat remotely analogous — to the way in which a Bushman teaches his or her offspring…. You are an infinitely more competent observer than I am, my dear sir, but all honest observation by a man capable of seeing things at all as they are, may be of some service; and perhaps it is just as well that we who on most points agree so exactly should be set down as differing somewhat — even though the difference is more apparent than reason this matter.”

5) TR Demonstrates Knowledge of the Hunting Behavior of Ducks in Criticizing a Nature Faker

Typed letter signed, October 12, 1903 – “As you say, I think the chief difference between you and me…is one of terminology. For instance, where I speak of ‘unconscious teaching’, I really mean simply acting in a manner which arouses imitation….The thing that struck me most in Long’s recent writings is his account of sea-ducks when they get mussels on their tongues to fresh water ponds to drown thorn in the fresh water. Now of course a salt water bivalve will die in fresh water, but he will die in the air; and if the duck simply walked upon the shore would achieve the purpose far better. In any event I am certain no such act ever occurred save in Mr. Long’s imagination.”

6) Soon After Returning From Yellowstone, TR Derides Those Who Would Make Caricatures of Animal Behavior

“This particular article deals with the Canada lynx; and it has no more right to be called natural history than has the account of the roc-catching elephants in the Arabian Nights tales.”

Typed letter signed, November 28, 1903. “Just a line to blow off steam! I have come across two more articles of Long an advertisement of a new book of his. One of these articles is in a big magazine – Scribner’s, I think. It is utterly infamous in these magazine editors to be willing to publish such outrageous falsehoods. This particular article deals with the Canada lynx; and it has no more right to be called natural history than has the account of the roc-catching elephants in the Arabian Nights tales. You performed a public service when you attacked Long. If the chance ever comes – though I suppose not in a year when I have so many legitimate enemies to fire at – I shall take your article as a text and skin Long alive.”

7) Bird watching (and Hunting) on White House grounds

“I have a pair of field glasses and have been trying to obey Emerson’s injunction; and I have come to the conclusion that he did not know what he was talking about when he praised naming the birds without a gun.”

Typed letter signed, May 14, 1906 – “I do wish you could have been down on one or two walks, or rather strolls, I have recently taken, and also could be with me when Mrs. Roosevelt and I walk around the White House grounds. I have a pair of field glasses and have been trying to obey Emerson’s injunction; and I have come to the conclusion that he did not know what he was talking about when he praised naming the birds without a gun. I do not moan that one should use the gun indiscriminately; but there are some birds, those that are rare and shy, warblers that keep to the very tops of the trees, or those that lie in jungley places, that can not be made out by the aid of field glasses? Or at least I cannot make them out. Now and then a warbler will come into full view as that Cape May warbler did and I will be able to examine it with complete satisfaction; but often after listening for a half hour to a fine, wiry little song, and occasionally catching a glimpse of a small, agile bird fluttering behind a spray of leaves, it will fly off without my having the slightest idea of what it is; and the dull-colored females cannot be told apart at all. If species are common of course after a while one might find out what they are.”

8) Roosevelt Discusses His Bird Notes as a Young Boy and Relishes at Rare Bird Sightings

“I am so glad that the purple finch, the black-throated green warbler and the red-winged blackbird all behaved like gentlemen and turned up as I had said they would.”

Typed letter signed, June 22, 1907 – “I hope you know what a pleasure it was to have you and Childs out here the other day, and I am so glad that the purple finch, the black-throated green warbler and the red-winged blackbird all behaved like gentlemen and turned up as I had said they would. If you happen to have my “Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail” you will see, in addition to the references I gave you the other day, some allusions to birds on pages 36 to 41. You spoke to me about any notes I might have, but I am sorry to say I do not think I have any notes of value, for I don’t suppose you would care for the notes I made as a boy thirty or thirty-five years ago. Moreover, I am afraid they would not contain anything of any real interest – just ordinary birds around Oyster Bay or those I saw in the Adirondacks or in Maine.” He adds in holograph, “Next spring won’t you go down with Mrs. Roosevelt and me to spend three or four days at Pine Knot in Virginia? I am sure you would like it; we would show you many birds, some of them new; and we might see passenger pigeons!”

9) TR Discusses Taking His Sons on Exploratory Expeditions and Demonstrates Remarkable Knowledge Over Birds

“The other night I took out the boys in rowboards for a camping out expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This time two young foxes, evidently this year’s cubs, came around the campfire half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our presence.”

Typed letter signed, July 19, 1907 – “In cutting that clover field we were working very hurriedly to avoid a rain. There were four of us at work, and I simply never thought of the nest until afterwards, when we were loading the hay from the cocks onto the hay wagon. I am as positive as I can be, however, from the behavior of the female redwings, that there was certainly one, and I think two, of their nests within fifty yards of that corner of the old barn. Have you Chapman’s book on the warblers? If so, you will find the description and picture of the Dominican or yellow-throated -warbler, although the picture does not portray the bird, as it ought to, with the long bill of the black-and-white warbler instead of the ordinary Dendroica bill. If you will tell me what book of birds you have by you, which contains an account of the warblers, I will write you back the page on which you will find the description. The American Museum of Natural History people tell me it is the only skin they happen to have from north of Maryland. It is funny how incidents sometimes crowd together. Really I have begun to feel a little like a nature faker myself during the last fortnight; for I have seen two or three things which I very much you could have seen with me. The other night I took out the boys in rowboards for a camping out expedition. We camped on the beach under a low bluff near the grove where a few years ago on a similar expedition we saw a red fox. This time two young foxes, evidently this year’s cubs, came around the campfire half a dozen times during the night, coming up within ten yards of the fire to pick up scraps and seeming to be very little bothered by our presence. Yesterday on the tennis ground I found a mo-la shrew. He was near the side lines first. I picked him up in a handkerchief, as he bit ray hand, and after we had all looked at him I let him go; but in a few minutes he came back and deliberately crossed the tennis grounds by the net. As he ran over the level floor of the court his motion reminded all of us of the motion of those mechanical mice that run around on wheels when wound up. A chipmunk that lives near the tennis court continually crosses it while the game is in progress. He has done it two or three times this year, and either he or his predecessor has had the same habit for several years. I am really puzzled to know why he should o across this perfectly bare surface, with the players jumping about on it, when he is not frightened and has no reason that I can see for going. Apparently he grows accustomed to the players and moves about among them as he would about for instance among a herd of cattle. “

10) Roosevelt Describes the Development of Animal Species, Using Natural Selection and the African Great Beasts

“Now I am prepared to admit that animals often originate as “sports”; but in such cases as the above, which should be readily multiplied, it seems to me the evidence is that there is often slow and gradual development of what ultimately becomes a new species.”

Typed letter signed, July 26, 1908 – “It was good to hear from you again. The political part of your letter I am not going to discuss now. Perhaps I am too fond of Taft and too closely associated with him to expect even dear friends outside to take the same view of him that I do. I have ordered Kellogg’s book at once. Yet, I knew of the German theories as to the origination of species by “sports” so to speak. Unquestionably they have struck one of the ways in which species do develop, but I think they give this way an altogether excessive prominence, and it is I think absurd for them to say natural selection never originates a species. Of course, “species” is itself a term which means nothing, and is simply a convenient bit of terminology by which we designate a group of animals sufficiently like one another, and cut off-by a sufficient interval from all other animals, to make it desirable to have some special term to show the likeness of one set and their dissimilarity from the other sot. The highest scientific authorities disagree widely as regards certain forms of life, one side contending that there are a dozen species which the other lumps into one or two. As regards some forms, we see a complete intergradation between very different-looking animals. As regards other forms, the connecting links have vanished, and in such cases the general tendency at present seems to be to treat the first instance as one species with a number of different varieties, but to make of the second a number of different species. Take the African zebra, for instance. There are two or three undoubtedly distinct kinds. Then, in addition, we come to the so-called Burchell’s zebra, much the most common and the most widely distributed. This has developed into six or eight well-marked forms, all of which have been described as separate, species, but all of which absolutely intergrade. On the other hand, on the same continent in the southernmost part there are two big antelope-like creatures called the bontebok and blesbok. They are highly-colored creatures, very much alike, but with certain distinctive marks which are always present. The two forms do not differ as much as the extreme forms of Burchell’s zebra, but there is no connecting link between them and therefore they are treated as separate species. It seems to me beyond question that there was such a connecting link, but that it has simply happened that the intervening forms have died out. The same is true of the hartebeests, there are as many forms as of the zebra, but they do not intergrade; the connecting links have gone. Now I am prepared to admit that animals often originate as “sports”; but in such cases as the above, which should be readily multiplied, it seems to me the evidence is that there is often slow and gradual development of what ultimately becomes a new species. As to exactly how much natural selection counts for, I am not able to say; but it certainly seems to me that it counts for something. “Yes, I know Oliver’s ‘Hamilton,’ and think it an extremely good book. I am much interested in your account of the woodchucks and thistle-finches. Here all the birds were back this spring just as they had been last summer. The black-throated green was not in the grove where I showed him to you, but either he or another was in a grove some three or four hundred yards off, and there have been several of this kind around the place. The purple finches have nested near the house, and the Baltimore oriole in the same drooping elm that I showed you. They skipped nesting there last year. The orchard orioles, cuckoos, and the grasshopper, sparrows, and all the others are here as usual; but I haven’t seen anything new this summer excepting at this very time a songsparrow is preparing to rear a second brood and is getting the material (of all things!) by plucking out loose bristles from the door-mat in front of our door. The red winged blackbirds are more numerous than ever; one sang on the roof of the new barn.”