' Now it has so completely fallen prey
to commercialism through the devastation of lumbermen, oilmen, and
farmers, that I have been forced to move my working territory and
build a new cabin about seventy miles north, at the head of the
swamp in Noble county, where there are many lakes, miles of
unbroken marsh, and a far greater wealth of plant and animal life
than existed during my time in the southern part. At the north end
every bird that frequents the Central States is to be found. Here
grow in profusion many orchids, fringed gentians, cardinal flowers,
turtle heads, starry campions, purple gerardias, and grass of
Parnassus. In one season I have located here almost every flower
named in the botanies as native to these regions and several that
I can find in no book in my library.
"But this change of territory involves the purchase of fifteen
acres of forest and orchard land, on a lake shore in marsh country.
It means the building of a permanent, all-year-round home, which
will provide the comforts of life for my family and furnish a
workshop consisting of a library, a photographic darkroom and
negative closet, and a printing room for me. I could live in such
a home as I could provide on the income from my nature work alone;
but when my working grounds were cleared, drained and ploughed up,
literally wiped from the face of the earth, I never could have
moved to new country had it not been for the earnings of the
novels, which I now spend, and always have spent, in great part
~upon my nature work.
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