It takes a long time to know much of nature. It is difficult to tell people how to 

 do it. Do you know how, with all your experience? No, don't answer; I know you 

 don't. Nobody told me how, and if he had I could not have done it on his plan. I 

 sought it out alone and nature revealed herself to me. It is painful to see the indiffer- 

 ence of others. — Fitch A. Hoyt. 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION 



VOL 



JULY. 1910 



No. 3 



The Nature Studies and Recreations 



of a Business Man 



By EDWARD F. BIGELOW, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Connecticut 



AXY years ago I read a 

 statement made by some 

 prominent naturalist to the 

 effect that the best natural- 

 ists do not write, lecture, 

 teach collect, buy nor sell. 

 I have forgotten who 

 made the assertion or 

 where I read it. because to me at the 

 time it seemed an exaggeration and far 

 from an expression of the truth, and it 

 is chiefly for these reasons that it has 

 clung to my memory. I wondered how 

 any naturalist could laud what seemed 

 to be inefficiency and inexperience. 

 especially since he was in positive con- 

 tradiction of the authorative and divine 

 statement that, "By their works ye shall 

 know them." But there is another fact 

 someone overlooked which is that the 

 intrinsic merit may be of the highest 



quality, though the "works" may not 

 attract the attention of those i:i the 

 immediate vicinity of the worker. The 

 cause may be none the less efficient 

 though its effects may never reach us. 



As memory goes back to my boy- 

 diood, I find that I must have been one 

 of the best naturalists in many re- 

 s »ects, for I never wrote, lectured nor 

 even read of nature, and most of us 

 who in later years strive to create and 

 to increase a knowledge and love oi 

 natural objects find ourselves con- 

 stantly reverting to those uncon- 

 sciously accumulative days of early 

 youth on the farm. I now can under- 

 stand what was a mystery when I read 

 that statement which 1 remember so 

 vividly because of my rebellion against 

 it. 



We who find ourselves revealed bv 



Copyright 1910 by The Anassiz Association. Arcadia : Sound Beach. Conn. 



