Eight animal biographies written as biographies and not as fables: a crow, a rabbit, a fox that poisons her own cub rather than leave it chained, and Lobo, the wolf of Currumpaw, whom Seton was paid to kill and never stopped regretting. Seton was a naturalist and a trapper before he was a writer, and insisted in his preface that every incident had happened. The animals all die; he said that was the only honest way to end. Sixteen plates by painters including Winslow Homer and George Inness carry the woods, fields and coastlines these animals lived in, from 1849 to 1894.