Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 149 



wise explained by Darwin. At any rate we can 

 all agree that the Creator could hardly have chosen 

 a more beautiful and artistic object upon which to 

 register His thumb-marks than a swallow-tailed 

 butterfly or a Luna moth. 



It is one thing to have a thought, and it is an 

 entirely different thing to so express that thought 

 that another person can understand it. Xow listen 

 to me a moment, boys, and see if you can under- 

 stand what I am going to tell you; see if you can 

 catch the thought which imderlies the whole of this 

 book, by which I mean the main idea that governs 

 me in writing this book. A number of times I 

 have joked about scientists and, while I greatly 

 respect them, f(H" my own purposes here I am going 

 to joke about them again. The particular scientists 

 I mean are the postage-stamp naturalists, those de- 

 voted students who spend all their time classifying 

 and sorting out dried bugs, butterflies and beetles, 

 indexing them and preserving them in order, as 

 one does a collection of postage-stamps in an 

 album. 



These men do not and cannot tell you what a 

 butterfly really is, they cannot tell you why it 

 exists, why it lives at all! They cannot tell you 



