196 THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. [vin. 



remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from the 

 temptations of the world into an entirely original and 

 most pleasant hermitage. For finding so the story 

 went that many of the finest insects kept to the tree- 

 tops, and never came to ground at all, he used to settle 

 himself among the boughs of some tree in the tropic 

 forests, with a long-handled net and plenty of cigars, 

 and pass his hours in that airy flower-garden, making 

 dashes every now and then at some splendid monster 

 as it fluttered round his head. His example need not 

 be followed by every one ; but it must be allowed that 

 -^at least as long as he was in his tree he was neither 

 dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise- 

 harming himself, and perhaps his fellow -creatures, from 



sheer want of employment. 



~i> One word more, and I have done. If I was allowed 

 to give one special piece of advice to a young officer, 

 whether of the army or navy, I would say : Respect 

 scientific men; associate with them; learn from them ; 

 find them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant 

 and instructive of companions but always respect 

 them. Allow them chivalrously, you who have an 

 acknowledged rank, their yet unacknowledged rank; and 

 treat them as all the world will treat them in a higher 

 and truer state of civilisation. They do not yet wear 

 the Queen's uniform; they are not yet accepted servants 

 of the State ; as they will be in some more perfectly 

 organised and civilised land : but they are soldiers 

 nevertheless, and good soldiers and chivalrous, fighting 

 their nation's battle, often on even less pay than you, 

 and with still less chance of promotion and of fame, 

 against most real and fatal enemies against ignorance 

 of the laws of this planet, and all the miseries which 



