THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 7 
company for dukes and princes. Nay, the study 
is now more than honourable; it is (what to many 
readers will be a far higher recommendation) even 
fashionable. Every well-educated person is eager to 
know something at least of the wonderful organic 
forms which surround him in every sunbeam and 
every pebble; and books of Natural History are 
finding their way more and more into drawing- 
rooms and school-rooms, and exciting greater thirst 
for a knowledge which, even twenty years ago, was 
considered superfluous for all but the professional 
student. 
What a change from the temper of two genera- 
tions since, when the naturalist was looked on as 
a harmless enthusiast, who went “ bug-hunting,” 
simply because he had not spirit to follow a fox! 
There are those alive who can recollect an amiable 
man being literally bullied out of the New Forest, 
because he dared to make a collection (at this 
moment, we believe, in some unknown abyss of that 
great Avernus, the British Museum) of fossil shells 
from those very Hordwell Cliffs, for exploring which . 
