eat or rest; ready to face sun and rain, wind and frost, and to cat or drink 

 thankfully an3'thing, liowever coarse or meagre; he should know how to 

 swim for his life, to pull an oar, sail a boat, and ride the first horse tliat 

 comes to hand ; he should be a good shot, and a skilful fisherman ; and if 

 he go far abroad, be able on occasion to fight for his life. For his moral 

 cliaracter, he must, like a kniglit of old, be first of all gentle and courteous, 

 ready and able to ingratiate himself with the poor, the ignorant, and the 

 savage ; not only because foreign travel will be often otherwise impossible, 

 but because he knows how much invaluable local information can be only 

 obtained from fishermen, miners, hunters, and tillers of the soil. Next, be 

 should be brave and enterprising, and withal patient and undaunted ; not 

 merely in travel, but in investigation ; knowing (as Bacon might have put 

 it) that the kingdom of Nature must be taken by violence, and that only to 

 those who knock long and earnestly does the great mother open the doors 

 of her sanctuary. He must be of a reverent turn of mind also ; not rashly 

 discrediting any reports, however vague and fragmentary ; giving man 

 credit always for some germ of truth, and giving Nature credit for an inex- 

 haustible fertility and variety, which will keep him bis life long always 

 reverent, yet never superstitious ; wondering at the commonest, but not 

 surprised by the most strange ; free from the idols of size and sensuous 

 loveliness ; able to see grandeur in the minutest objects, beauty in the 

 most ungainly ; holding every phenomenon worth the noting down ; 

 believing that every pebble holds a treasure, every bud a revelation; 

 making it a point of conscience to pass over nothing through laziness or 

 hastiness, lest the vision once offered and despised should be withdrawn ; 

 and looking at every object as if he were never to behold it again. More- 

 over, he must keep himself free from all those perturbations of mind which 

 not only weaken energy, but darken and confuse the inductive faculty ; from 

 baste and laziness, from melancholy, testiness, pride, and all the passions 

 which make men see only what they wish to see. Of solemn and 

 scrupulous reverence for truth, of the habit of mind which regards each 

 fact and discovery, not as our own possession, but as the possession of its 

 Creator, independent of us, our tastes, our needs, or our vain-glory, we 

 hardly need to speak ; for it is the very essence of a naturalist's faculty, the 

 very tenure of his existence ; and without truthfulness. Science would be as 

 impossible now as chivalry would have been of old. And last, but not 

 least, the perfect naturalist should have in him the very essence of true 

 chivalry, self-devotion ; the desire to advance, not himself and his own fame 

 or wealth, but knowledge and mankind. He should have this great virtue ; 

 and in spite of many shortcomings, naturalists as a class have it, to a degree 

 which makes them stand out most honourably in the midst of a self-seeking 

 and mammonite generation, inclined to value everything by its money price, 

 its private utility. The spirit which gives freely, because it knows that it 



