822 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



No forester knows or will know all the trees of the forest, or, if he 

 does, will know enough of their growth, structure, and climatic con- 

 ditions of reproduction to be satisfied with himself. No ornithologist 

 ever boasts even to himself that his knowledge of his kingdom, with 

 its wonderfully separate subjects, so unlike all other living things in 

 the grand condition of their lives, is more than fragmentary, or insus- 

 ceptible of increase. He has never examined all the eagles' eyes, or 

 the angles at which the humming-bird's feathers lie, and therefore flash 

 so unaccountably. Who knows all about lions, or can prove whether 

 or no the wild beasts' rage is an evolution from hereditary hunger 

 continued through ages ? Mr. Buckland attended to fish principally, 

 fish from sharks to minnows, and collected, it is said, five thousand 

 specimens, and was always hurrying about inspecting, or receiving, or 

 writing about, new fishes ; but, if he had lived a thousand years, he 

 would not have exhausted his pursuit. There would have been still 

 much to know about varieties of gills, and fins, and scales, and more 

 about the fish which could or could not be cultivated ; and when that 

 had been done there would remain the inexhaustible and bewilderinor 

 subject of the comparative intellectual capacity of different fishes. 

 Do carp know their friends or not? A pursuit always so fresh, 

 always so inexhaustible, and always so full of results, is one high 

 condition of happiness ; and it has occasionally, and might have 

 oftener this addition that the naturalist may live by it. Happy the 

 man who in earning his living is in his groove of work, who feels that 

 his faculties are not twisted or repressed by his daily labor, and has in 

 his hardest toil pleasure ; but what is his happiness to the naturalist's 

 who earns his income in his play ? Imagine the street-boy to whom 

 hopscotch brings a reputable and sufiicient subsistence, and yet who can 

 never be tired of hopscotch ! Mr. Buckland, curious in fish, and fond of 

 open air, and of traveling about, and of fidgeting in briny places, was 

 set to inspect fisheries, and instruct fishermen, and write about fish in 

 " Land and Water," and tell mankind generally anything it might 

 want to know about fishes, and all the while was adding to his own 

 store and the world's store of knowledge of a subject which he justly 

 thought great, and got by doing all that an excellent income. What 

 wonder that he was happy and cheerful, and given to jocularities, 

 sometimes very clever, sometimes only whimsical, occasionally a little 

 foolish ; and had in him a most attractive element of childlikeness, 

 which even secluded fishermen, jealous of the " Government chaps," 

 and half dreading either interference or fines, found it impossible to 

 resist ? They " cottoned " to him always, like dogs to a fearless child. 

 Mr. Buckland could have induced Irish fishermen to fish without boun- 

 ties, a feat supposed impossible ; and the magnet in him was the natural- 

 ist's magnet, Audubon's, or White's, or Waterton's magnet, the charm 

 of a nature full of the content which springs from harmony between 

 interest and occupation. The man is fortunate who lives in the open 



