381 



and happiness — true in all its teachings as regard his moral and 

 religious welfare, but demanding the same care and caution that is 

 required in the study of other things, in order to elicit the truth 

 before applying it to his own heart and conscience. 



But apart from such high considerations, it is a pleasant thing 

 in the evening of life to look back on the unalloyed enjoyment, I 

 might add the improvement of mind, derived from the study of 

 science taken up in boyhood and carxied on to that maturity of 

 years when the ripened judgment is able to discern its true worth. 

 St. Pierre, in his " Studies of Nature," has left this record of what 

 he had himself gleaned from those studies. " I can say with 

 truth," he remarks, " that I have not permitted a single day to 

 pass without picking up some agreeable or useful observation."* 

 A much more recent author. Sir Henry Holland, a man of general 

 literature and science though not a naturalist, in his " RecoUectiona 

 of Past Life," quite lately published, thus speaks of the advantages 

 enjoyed by the mere collector of specimens of natural history : — 

 " Were I devoid of other pursuits there are none I should so much 

 desire to assume as those of a collector, whatever the object of hia 

 research. The collector of beetles or moths, of ferns or fungi, is a 

 happier man, cceteris paribus, than one who has no such definite 

 object of pursuit. The interest here is one which augments with 

 its gratification, is never exhausted by completion, and often 

 survives when the more tumultuous business or enjoyments of life 

 have passed away."t 



I feel the force of both these remarks. I have sought to copy 

 after St. Pierre in what he states to have been his daily habit, 

 while I can aver upon my own experience that never were any 

 commendations more just than those bestowed by Sir Henry 

 Holland on the Naturalist's pursuits. But the satisfaction I have 

 myself derived from those pursuits does not stop here. It has been 

 enhanced by a desire to get others to drink of the same well-spring 

 of intellectual enjoyment which has so thoroughly slacked my own 

 thirst ; and I trust I may, without vanity or boast, point to thia 

 Club as the issue of my endeavours, feeble though they have been, 



• English Translation by Hunter, vol i., p. 2, 

 t Recollections of Past Life, pp. 63, 5i, 



