New Brunswick Animals and the Animal Romancers²

The charm of the study to the man of science is the triumph of demonstrating the truth. He makes this his sole standard, as it is his sole reward.

For Ganong, scientifically proven information was essential for any presentation or publication about the natural world. This led to his profound dislike of a growing practice among fiction writers to anthropomorphize animal behaviour. Ganong believed they were misleading readers by presenting these animals with human feelings, behaviours, and thought processes. He also chastised book reviewers who wrote glowing reviews of the stories without any scientific background. His opinions are clear in 1905:

The last quarter of a century has seen a remarkable development in that form of literature which consists of charming popular writings about animals and their doings not as they are, but as people like to think they are. [These writers] have given their imaginations full play, thus producing fascinating works of fiction disguised as natural history. It is however this disguise which constitutes the ground of criticism against these works.

He specifically criticized the animal stories of American cleric William Long and acclaimed New Brunswick writer Sir Charles G.D. Roberts. Since Roberts was married to a cousin of Ganong’s wife, this must have made for some interesting dinner conversations. William Long, a church minister, found himself at the centre of this controversy through his stories about animal parents teaching behaviours to their young. Despite the wide audience for Long’s stories, Ganong felt they lacked scientific rigour and clearly contradicted scientific facts, saying they “seem to me to show that he has little idea of the nature of evidence or of logical proof, and that he possesses neither the temperament nor the training.” In a letter to Ganong, Long politely suggests Ganong’s reaction is based on personal experience, not science:

As for the criticism itself, it seems to me honest and to be fairly free from that unscientific venom which has characterized one or two recent criticisms from professed scientific people. In the interest of truth, I am glad you wrote it, if you felt that way; but I have an idea that sooner or later you will regret having published it. Summed up, your whole criticism is this: my observations are contrary to your experience, therefore you disbelieve them.

Ganong agreed that Long’s intentions were good but suggested that emotion swayed his written interpretations of animal behaviour. Long replied that he was simply repeating information provided by wildlife experts. He claimed that Ganong’s own wilderness companion, Mauran Furbish, had told him about a kingfisher killing a fish, dropping it into a shallow pond, and using it to teach its chicks how to catch a live fish. When Ganong checked the story with Furbish, his friend admitted only to telling Long about a dead Gaspereau found near the edge of a lake, noting that Long had taken literary liberties with the story.

Ganong was even more disparaging of Roberts, suggesting that he was deliberately misleading the public by pretending first-hand knowledge of wild animals in their natural setting. It was acceptable to use information accumulated from sources, he said, but not without giving appropriate credit. Furthermore, Ganong asserted that Roberts had not had the opportunity or time while growing up in Douglas (near Fredericton) to study wild animals such as moose, caribou, bear, and lynx in their natural surroundings. Instead, he suggested:

His knowledge of these animals must have been gained mostly in the public libraries, museums and menageries of New York City, and his interpretations of their psychology, upon which latterly he lays some stress, can have little basis other than in his own imagination.

Ganong wrote that Roberts should acknowledge in the preface to his books that they were “not based upon personal observation of their subjects, but are as accurate as he can make them from other sources of information.” In this item for the Natural History Society bulletin, he called the stories “remarkable imaginative works,” but decried the tendency of new nature writers to present unproven facts and imagination as legitimate fact.