A STUDENT OF HISTORY. 23 
OUR STUDIES AT PARIS AND IN SWITZERLAND. 
In the prolonged perusal of naturalists and travellers 
by which we prepared ourselves for writing “The 
Bird,” and for which nothing less was required than 
the patience of a solitary woman, we gathered on the 
way a number of facts and details which presented the 
Insect to our eyes under the most varied aspects. The 
Insect appeared to us incessantly in company with the 
Bird,—here like a harmony, there as an antagonism,— 
but too often in profile, and as a subordinate being. 
I was in the middle of the sixteenth century, and 
while engaged for about three years in_ historical 
studies, my knowledge on this point was collected only 
by means of extracts, readings, and conversations every 
evening. The various elements of this grand study I 
acquired through the medium of a soul eminently gentle 
towards the things of nature, and generously given to 
love the weak ; whose loyal and patient affection, inde- 
finitely extending curiosity, picked up, so to speak, like 
the ant, and as so many grains of sand, the materials 
which we found less frequently in the more important 
works than in an infinity of memoirs and scattered 
dissertations. 
To live long, steadfastly, for ever,—this it is which 
renders weak spirits strong. Such a perseverance of taste and affec- 
tion is not less necessary when one wishes to put aside one’s books, and 
