298 BIRDS AND MAN 



follow — a story immeasurably longer and infinitely 

 more wonderful than that which the Ancient Mariner 

 told to the Wedding Guest. It was an impossible 

 task. 



At length, after an interval of silence, to me 

 full of trouble, the expected note of dissent would 

 come. 



I had told him, he would say, either too much 

 or not enough. No doubt there had been a very 

 considerable increase of knowledge since his day ; 

 nevertheless, judging from something I had said 

 on the hibernation, or torpid condition, of swallows, 

 there was still something to learn with regard to the 

 hfe and conversation of animals. The change in 

 the character of modern books about nature, of 

 which I had told him, quoting passages — a change 

 in the direction of a more poetic and emotional treat- 

 ment of the subject — he, looking from a distance, 

 was inclined to regard as merely a literary fashion of 

 the time. That anything so unforeseen had come 

 to pass, — so important as to change the current of 

 thought, to give to men new ideas about the unity 

 of nature and the relation in which we stood towards 

 the inferior creatures, — he could not understand. It 

 should be remembered that the human race had 

 existed some fifty or sixty centuries on the earth, 



