BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 165 
call intuitive knowledge, that it is not possible 
to say what value should be set upon mere 
impressions such as that little gaping flesh-red 
and yellow mouth left indelibly burned in my 
memory. Science is plodding on towards the 
solution of such questions asI here raise. 
With the eyes of a healthy, impressible, imag- 
inative child I had seen a young bird gaping 
over the rim of its nest, stolidly greedy for a 
worm, and instantly I had grasped, without 
knowing it, one of the most fascinating prob- 
lems of life. 
It is the fashion for scientists to pretend to 
ignore the value of the imagination, and to 
loudly baw! for facts; but all the knowing ones 
wink under their bonnets and furtively indulge 
in sublime guessing wherever the limitations 
of knowledge are not set within the domain of 
exactitude. Of course it would not become 
me to say that a palzozoic fish cannot be de- 
scribed accurately with no data at hand save 
the fragment of a doubtful fin-spine upon 
which to build the perfect anatomy, for has 
not this been done, or something very like it? 
Still a rather lawless imagination can easily 
enjoy the consternation with which certain 
paleontological pictures might be viewed by 
their draughtsmen if the original whole could 
suddenly appear in the place of the precious 
fossil fragment. On the other hand, however, 
some of the guesses of the comparative an- 
atomists may be flashes of truth revealed to 
genius—that is to a simple and healthy mind. 
It was years after my boyish adventure on the 
cliffside that I recalled with startling vividness 
its strange effect. Meantime I had been into 
geology and biology and their cognate sciences, 
