It can probably be said in all truth of her nature books
and nature novels, that in the past ten years they have sent more
people afield than all the scientific writings of the same
period. That is a big statement, but it is very likely pretty
close to the truth. Mrs. Porter has been asked by two London and
one Edinburgh publishers for the privilege of bringing out
complete sets of her nature books, but as yet she has not felt
ready to do this.
In bringing this sketch of Gene Stratton-Porter to a close it
will be interesting to quote the author's own words describing
the Limberlost Swamp, its gradual disappearance under the
encroachments of business, and her removal to a new field even
richer in natural beauties. She says: "In the beginning of the
end a great swamp region lay in northeastern Indiana. Its head
was in what is now Noble and DeKalb counties; its body in Allen
and Wells, and its feet in southern Adams and northern Jay The
Limberlost lies at the foot and was, when I settled near it,
EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED IN MY BOOKS. The process of dismantling it
was told in, Freckles, to start with, carried on in `A Girl of
the Limberlost,' and finished in `Moths of the Limberlost.' 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.
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