42 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
not, as he was, a soldier and a sportsman), “and 
made the study of Nature his aim and not his 
amusement, his would have been one of the greatest 
names in the whole range of British science.” I 
question, nevertheless, whether he would not have 
lost more than he would have gained by a different 
training. It might have made him a more learned 
systematizer ; but would it have quickened in him 
that “seeing” eye of the true soldier and sportsman, 
which makes Montagu’s descriptions indelible word- 
pictures, instinct with life and truth? “There is 
no question,” says E. Forbes, after bewailing the 
vagueness of most naturalists, “about the identity 
of any animal Montagu described. ... He was a 
forward-looking philosopher; he spoke of every 
creature as if one exceeding like it, yet different 
from it, would be washed up by the waves next 
tide. Consequently his descriptions are permanent.” 
Scientific men will recognize in this the highest 
praise which can be bestowed, because it attri- 
butes to him the highest faculty—The Art of 
Seeing; but the study and the book would not 
