The Green Roosevelt: Theodore Roosevelt in Appreciation of Wilder ...

such a report, its directors would lay themselves open to a prosecution for fraud.”³³

Still, Roosevelt could be less rhetorical and more scientific as the occasion demanded, and, like any accomplished “amateur,” routinely and with relish upstaged the professionals. Anecdotes of such abound. Osborn recalls a conference Roosevelt convened at his home in Oyster Bay, where a question arose among “experts” about a subspecies of Grévy's zebra. “Roosevelt,” Osborn recalls, “went to the map, pointed out directly the particular and only spot where this species could be found, and said that he did not think the expedition could possibly get down in that direction.”³⁴ Similarly, Merriam concludes, “Few people are aware of Roosevelt's knowledge of mammals and their skulls.” He recalls an evening where the Colonel “astonished everyone, including several eminent naturalists—by picking up skull after skull and mentioning the scientific name of the genus to which each belonged.”³⁵

While Roosevelt's knowledge of the natural world consistently impresses, his know-it-all rhetoric, coupled with his trademark bully pulpit, also earned him enemies among the press and nature “professionals” of his day. Perhaps the best example of a Roosevelt presidential public relations blunder, at least where nature was concerned, was the “nature faker” controversy of 1903–07, in which Roosevelt, taking up the cause of his good friend and fellow naturalist Burroughs, was quoted in Everybody's Magazine as saying: “I don't believe for a minute…that some of these men who are writing nature stories and putting the word truth prominently in their prefaces know the heart of the wild things…. They don't know, or if they do know, they indulge in the wildest exaggerations under the mistaken notion that they are strengthening their stories.”³⁶ William Long, the author of such sentimental and, at least according to Burroughs and Roosevelt, scientifically inaccurate tracts as Ways of the Wood Folk and Wayeeses the White Wolf returned Roosevelt's volley, accusing the President in the pages of the Philadelphia Public Ledger as follows: “Every time Mr. Roosevelt gets near the heart of a wild thing he invariably puts a bullet through it.”³⁷ The St. Louis Republican and other Roosevelt “enemies” gloried in Long's brave rebuttal, arguing