AN APOLOGY 3 



from one interest to another at the expense of 

 continued study of any individual subject. Even 

 in the midst of the largest towns human interests 

 are not the only ones inviting attention, for the 

 most densely peopled areas contain an abundant 

 resident Fauna and Flora, and the surrounding 

 country is constantly overflowing and sending in 

 streams of animal and vegetable immigrants to 

 establish themselves for a time within urban limits. 

 Maiden-hair and other ferns nestle among the irregu- 

 larities of the mouldering masonry of walls and the 

 lining of wells ; fig-trees of various kinds crop out 

 on roofs and cornices and send down reptilian coils 

 of roots in complicated and disintegrative network ; 

 and in all open spaces and garden plots the vegeta- 

 tion, in place of presenting the poverty-stricken 

 and blighted look that it ordinarily has in British 

 towns, is constantly asserting itself and striving to 

 develop into a dense jungle. This alone would be 

 enough to render the Fauna of an Indian town 

 relatively rich, but an equally potent factor is to 

 be found in the habits of the human inhabitants, 

 who are free from the desire to capture or kill any 

 strange or beautiful living thing that they may 

 meet with, who have no youthful hereditary instinct 

 for bird-nesting, and in mature life no natural appre- 

 ciation of "murder as a fine art." 



It takes one some time, however, to realise the 

 force of these influences, and to cease to wonder at 



