518 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



so forth. It is interesting in this connection to note that the ornitholo- 

 gist Coues became a historian during the last years of his life. The 

 love of beauty is also undoubtedly a strong factor in the making of biol- 

 ogists, although there are some good workers who seem to be singularly 

 deficient in this respect.* Many years ago the present writer went with 

 Dr. and Mrs. Wallace to find the daffodils in an English meadow. When 

 we arrived at the place, we found the flowers in profusion, and it was 

 inspiring to see the child-like pleasure the veteran naturalist took in 

 their beauty. Here was a man who could never grow old, to whom 

 nature was a perpetual delight. As I heard Professor C. L. Herrick 

 say in an address to some students, the love of nature is the secret of 

 perpetual youth. 



In the first issue of The Hibbert Journal, Sir Oliver Lodge writes 

 as follows: 



Take a scientific man who is not something more than a scientific man, one 

 who is not a poet, or a philosopher, or a saint, and place him in the atmosphere 

 habitual to the churches and he must starve. He requires solid food, and he 

 finds himself in air. . . . Take a religious man, who has not a multitude of 

 other aptitudes overlaid upon his religion, into the cold dry workings, the 

 gropings and tunnellings of science, where everything must be scrutinized and 

 proved, distinctly conceived and precisely formulated, and he cannot breathe. 



I think this antithesis is not altogether a natural one, but that, on 

 the contrary, the scientific man must be something of 'a poet, or a phi- 

 losopher, or a saint, ' to be completely a scientific man. It will be a sad 

 day for the world when we cease to have men who can live freely in the 

 enjoyment of the universe, and each one is permitted to know only this 

 or that. Let us be free to think and enjoy, even though our thoughts 

 wander far afield, and our enjoyment is not always that of a connoisseur. 



Sometimes science suffers greatly in the opinion of those who do not 

 claim to be scientific, just because her proper character is not under- 

 stood, and it is assumed that she must be cold, hard and unimaginative. 

 I have heard the late William Morris speak contemptuously of science, 

 and in his admirable lecture on 'The Aims of Art' (1887) he says that 

 if socialism does not prevail ' science will grow more and more one-sided, 

 more incomplete, more wordy and useless, till at last she will pile herself 

 up into such a mass of superstition, that beside it the theologies of old 

 time will seem mere reason and enlightenment. ' Yet Morris was him- 

 self an admirable observer of nature, and possessed many of the best 

 qualities of a naturalist. I suppose the name of psychology would have 



* I heard the other day a perfectly authentic story of a teacher in one of 

 our best universities, a man who has done wonderful work in classification, and 

 is far ahead of all others in his particular specialty. One of his students, look- 

 ing through the microscope, exclaimed at the beauty of some object. The pro- 

 fessor immediately shut him up with the remark : ' I should think that by this 

 time you would know that you don't come here to look at pretty things! ' 



