INTERPRETATION OF NATURE oe 
“THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE’”’ 
AND 
“THE NATURE OF INTERPRETATION.” * 
By E. J. Wayianp, F.G:S., F.R.GS., &c., 
Assistant Mineralogical Surveyor (Ceylon), 
Late National, Post Graduate, and Marshall (Biological) Research 
Scholar, Royal College of Science, London. 
A.—THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE. 
HE term “ naturalist ” is, in the popular acceptation, 
a very wide one ; it includes all folk from the narrowest 
specialist with but one idea (his own) to the over-enthusiastic 
amateur with too many ideas for complete digestion (generally 
not his own); it includes investigators who think seriously 
about their work, and wonder-seekers whose sole quest of 
Nature is novelty. It includes those who hug detail and those 
who despise it, systematists who collect things fer classification 
and collectors who gather specimens as a schoolboy gathers 
postage stamps. In fine, all sorts and conditions of people 
who think or read about Nature at all. 
As the branches of natural knowledge constitute, more or 
less, separate departments of science, the various followers of 
Nature are best named from the department in which they 
work, 7.e., as mycologists, brachyopodists, &c., so that the 
name “ naturalist ” is more appropriately reserved foc those 
fortunate people who are able to take a broad, intelligent, and 
comprehensive interest in the general problems of natural 
science. It is in that sense that the name is employed in 
this paper. 
One of the facts which strongly impresses itself on the 
minds of those who study living Nature is that specialization 
carried beyond certain limits is a bad thing for the individual] ; 
good, as it may be, for the community. 
* A lecture delivered to the Ceylon Natural History Society. 
5 6(7)14 
