OOLLKCTING NOOTUIDA: BY LAKE EHIE. 99 



say), and tliat tlio speciality of the Indo-Germanic race is the treatment 

 of facts and the facts of Nature par excellence. We are an intellectual 

 rather than an emotional race. It is not that we have no hearts, but 

 that we have such tremendous minds. We unceasingly want to know, 

 you know, etc. Truth is one, and even a butterfly conceals it, though 

 not, like man, intentionally. And it is the i)ursuit of truth after all 

 which Lessing tells us constitutes the happiness of thinking man. 

 Again, I might show that entomology has its {esthetic side, although 

 we are aware that the beauty is not in the object itself, but in the 

 effect which we perceive in it. I have never been able to see a Milk- 

 weed Butterfly drooping from the flowerets of Asclepias without a thrill 

 of pleasure. We are all searchers after perfection, and each one finds a 

 fragment of what he believes to be truth. This is one of the enchanting 

 deceptions of a world Ave none of us can really understand, though 

 most of us believe that we have understood it, and many even that 

 they have succeeded in it. 



I might have spared myself the trouble of writing all the preced- 

 ing. I could have simply given my latitude and longitude, and stated 

 that I was there to catcli moths. But everyone who has a story to tell 

 makes the most of it, and this is a very little one and I must make 

 much of it. Early in the morning I had left Buffalo with my traps ; 

 but it was nearly evening before I had found a spot on the ridge 

 which pleased me, and had pitched my tent and dismissed my helps. 

 It is true the farm-house was not far off, but here I was to all intents 

 and purposes alone, senl avec mon dme, in the woods. I had hardly 

 time to arrange my things and cook my suj^per when night fell with 

 its American suddenness. I was too tired to read by the lamp I 

 trimmed, so wrapped myself in my blanket and quickly fell asleep to 

 the distant moaning of the lake. Shortly after midnight some noise or 

 other awoke me. I lay awhile considering matters. A tent is a sort 

 of a trap that the owner is caught in. You can even be prodded at 

 through the canvas walls. You can see nothing. Through which end 

 will you escajje ? After coming to this view of the case it occurred to 

 me that, instead of staying inside and frightening myself, it would be 

 better to go outside and frighten somebody else. I stepped out of the door 

 of the tent. What a lovely night ! There was no moon ; but the radiant 

 floor of heaven was trimmed with stars, " thick inlaid with patines of 

 bright gold." In America it would have been easier to have written 

 such beautiful things because the skies are fairer there. The wind 

 rustled from time to time through the tree tops as I carefully made my 

 way down the side of the ridge upon which my tent was pitched. In 

 the dark I crossed the creek in my boat and, fastening it again, made 

 my way over the outer ridge to the lake side. The leaden waters 

 reflected what light they could borrow from the stars, and broke gently 

 over the shingle at my feet. If, at that hour, 1 could only surprise 

 some slee}nng secret of nature ! I sat down and listened. In such 

 moments the outside world seems to contain elements inimical to man. 

 It becomes a mystery ; it threatens us with the unknown ; it is out of 

 sympathy with us. There is something in me wliich is not in this 

 outside world, whicli is alien to it, and whicli I can find again only in 

 my friend. But soon the night itself soothed me, as it looses all 

 prisoners' bands and stays the crying for the dead. I went back to my 

 tent again and fell asleep in quiut. I rose early, before the sun. 



