OH THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 61 



bird assailed him with a torrent of abuse as he 

 approached her offspring, and another suffered him 

 to lay hold of her, sooner than she would forsake 

 her nest : again, of the banks of flowers upon 

 which he lay and pondered the bed of happy 

 violets, the golden cowslips, the "jocund company'' 

 of daffodils, the delicate wood sorrel, and the wind 

 flower ; he tells you how he saw the face of wintry 

 nature turned into a perfect paradise of loveliness, 

 and says 



" Though absent long 



These forms of beauty have not been to me 

 As is a landscape to a blind man's eye ; 

 But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 

 Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, 

 In hours of weariness, sensations sweet." 



These are the stores upon which the lover of nature 

 can draw. 



The poets of nature have been many, and I must 

 not take up your time in quoting what is most likely 

 familiar to you. I have tried to show what a charm 

 there is around us if we like to experience it what 

 an infinite variety there is for the mind to study. 

 It is this infinite variety which gives the superiority 

 to Natural History as a means of recreation : there 

 is no fear of exhausting the subject. Alexander the 

 Great was sorely distressed when he had conquered 

 all there was to conquer ; but it cannot be so with 

 us, Creation knows no limit. I remember in some 

 " wild dream of a German poet " that a human 

 being was conducted over the universe to view GOD'S 

 worlds, and that after sweeping past innumerable 

 orbs, planets, satellites, and comets, the mind of 

 the man sank into itself, and shuddered with the 



