8 ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
walk is very often quite aimless, and is only undertaken as a 
matter of duty, out of regard to one’s health. A man takes a 
certain number of steps every day; he feels a sort of satisfaction 
after it, and goes to his work again until the time returns for its 
repetition. All well and good perhaps, but I ask, is it not also 
our duty to keep our minds in health, as well as our bodies ? The 
above individual grows no richer, mentally, for his labour. How 
different from the case of another, who tells you he never comes 
home from a ramble without having discovered something fresh : 
he goes out to escape from his daily routine of business ; he knows 
that nothing rests the mind so much as change, and that when it 
is thoroughly wearied out by continued concentration on one sub- 
ject, it is better to occupy it with another than to suffer it to be 
idle. And therefore in his walk he notices the flower and the 
animal, their habitats, and their times of appearing; he discovers, 
without the aid of books, that there is ‘‘a time for everything ”»— 
a set time, and that in the beautiful regularity which pervades 
nature, nothing appears out of time or order; the caterpillar is 
not hatched before its food-plant is putting forth its leaves; the 
butterfly and the bat do not wake from their winter’s sleep when 
there is nothing for them to eat; everything is arranged. He 
notices, with scarcely an effort, the peculiarities of the beasts of 
the field, and the birds of the air ; he discovers the marvellous con- 
nection between one species and another, between one family and 
another, and the dependence of all upon the Creator, so that 
*“'The whole round earth is every way _ 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” 
In theSpring Ais eyes first see the swallow, fis ears are first 
greeted by the cuckoo, he is gratified by the bursting forth of the 
vegetation into the most lovely green ; in the Autumn, while tints 
still more lovely objectively, array themselves before him, his de- 
light is tempered with sober thoughts of the great change which 
is one day to be wrought in himself. In Summer he beholds the 
triumphant reign of all living things, and in Winter—generally 
thought to be dull and cheerless in the country,—he knows where 
to find the squirrel and the dormouse snugly domiciled; he can 
find you the chrysalis of many a moth and butterfly marvellously 
