Victorian magazines abound with nature articles. Many authors strove to guide their readers into a closer relationship with nature, encouraging them to go into the woods and fields and see what was to be seen, to learn how to identify plants and animals. As for the "romantic" view, I've come across many articles by naturalists who think nothing of trapping and killing an interesting specimen so that they can take it home and study it more carefully. (Audubon, of course, was notorious for this!) Writers who offer the most delightful odes to seasonal rambles also, quite often, take their guns along so that they can pot a rabbit or a partridge whilst rhapsodizing over the joys of the season.

Did Victorians "anthropomorphize" animals? Some certainly did. Others, as I've said, often viewed them from the perspective of "what's for dinner?" Authors like Alexander Japp wrote fascinating treatises on animal behavior that often attempted to ascribe human emotions or motives to birds and beasts. In the Pets and Domestic Animals section, you'll find quite a bit of moralizing and anthropomorphizing. And since authors writing about animal behavior often covered wild and domestic creatures in the same piece, you'll find some overlap between these two sections.

This section offers a wide variety of Victorian views of nature. I've tried to include those articles that reflect a distinctly Victorian approach to the topic, rather than basic "natural history" pieces that could have been written just as easily in our own era. You'll also find some lovely pieces by UK naturalist Grant Allen and US naturalist John Burroughs, who offer very interesting and very different views of the world around them.

Nature in General Rambles & Observations Nature Through the Seasons Fauna Mammals - Individual Species Mammals - Roundups Animal Behavior: Observations & Anecdotes Fish, Aquatic & Marine Life Reptiles & Amphibians Spiders, Butterflies & Insects Birds Songbirds & Bird Life Sea Birds & Waterfowl Individual Bird Species • See also Pets & Domestic Animals: Bird Stories

Plants & Flowers Plants & Trees Wildflowers Nature Authors Grant Allen's Nature Series The Nature Articles of John Burroughs The Marvellous Menagerie of Eliza Brightwen See also... Weather, Natural Phenomena & Disasters