Introduction ix 
Into all this scientific activity Belt was born, and from 
his earliest years it may be said of him, as in the well-known 
lines it was said of Agassiz— 
““ And he wandered away and away 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 
Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe. 
And whenever the way seemed long, 
Or his heart began to fail, 
She would sing a more wonderful song, 
Or tell a more marvellous tale.” 
“If happiness,’ he wrote in his twenty-second year, 
“consists in the number of pleasing emotions that occupy 
our mind—how true is it that the contemplation of nature, 
which always gives rise to these emotions, is one of the great 
sources of happiness.’’ 
The earliest instance which has been remembered of his 
fondness for animal life occurred when he was about three 
years old. He had been in the garden and came running 
to show his mother what he had found. Opening his 
carefully gathered up pinafore, out jumped two frogs— 
to the great dismay of the good lady, for frogs are first 
cousins to toads, the dire effects of whose glance and venom 
were known to every one. 
He received the best education the town could give, and 
was fortunate in his schoolmasters—first Dr. J. C. Bruce 
of antiquarian fame, and then Mr. John Storey, second to 
none in his day as a north-country botanist. 
Belt’s father was much interested in horticulture; and, 
possessing some meteorological instruments, entrusted 
him, when only twelve years old, with the keeping of a set 
of observations which showed not only the barometric and 
thermometric readings twice a day, and the highest and 
lowest temperatures, but also the rainfall, the state of the 
sky, the form of the clouds, and the force and direction 
of the wind. The elaborately arranged columns, full of 
symbols and figures, look very quaint in the careful boyish 
handwriting, and must have absorbed much of his spare 
time. 
Insects, however, had the greatest attraction for him. 
He writes in his journal: ‘‘I have made a great improve- 
ment in the study of entomology, to which I have an ardent 
attachment.” And a little later: ‘I find I have not time 
