226 EVOLUTION 



sometimes to explain them to, whereby in- 

 deed botany came into fashion. Of botany 

 there are always these two schools the 

 pharmacist's and the gardener's; so its 

 professors belong essentially to one or other, 

 sometimes partly to both, but never thor- 

 oughly: that is too much to ask. The 

 zoologists then? These are hunters; first 

 out after big game with its dangers, its 

 trophies; after birds too, and their plumage. 

 Sometimes there comes to one the vision of 

 St. Hubert, and then he lays aside his gun, 

 and takes up his notebook or his camera. 

 Darwin was one of these from his Beagle 

 days at any rate; but before that, he 

 was plainly of the hunter type in fact, a 

 born truant, the stuff true poachers are 

 made of. 



Other naturalist-hunters come down to 

 smaller and smaller deer, next to their fleas 

 and midges, and now to-day are hunting out 

 the parasites within these, and to some pur- 

 pose. Other naturalists, again, are fisher- 

 men, increasingly expert, their huts and pools 

 growing into zoological stations, their nets 

 searching the sea from its surface-plankton 

 to abyssal dredgings; and these from Arctic 

 to Antarctic. Plainly then, the natural 

 sciences grow up along with practical life 

 and ever learn from it anew. 



