SOURCE: Brooks, Paul. “‘The Two Johns’: Burroughs and Muir.” In Speaking for Nature: How Literary Naturalists from Henry Thoreau to Rachel Carson Have Shaped America, pp. 3‐32. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Brooks explores the lives and writings of the naturalists John Muir and John Burroughs, claiming that the two men made Americans recognize the natural world as part of their culture by revealing poetic truth behind scientific facts.

Vernal Equinox, 1911. Theodore Roosevelt, two years out of the White House, is in California delivering a lecture under the auspices of a scientific institute. Before reaching his main theme—his recent African adventures—he brings up a subject that has remained close to his heart throughout all the turmoil of politics and the presidency. What the world needs, he says, is more men with scientific imagination—men who can take the facts of science and write of...