BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 165 



call intuitive knowledge, that it is not possible 

 to say what value should be set upon mere 

 impressions such as that little gaping flesh-red 

 and yellow mouth left indelibly burned in my 

 memory. Science is plodding on towards the 

 solution of such questions as I here raise. 

 With the eyes of a healthy, impressible, imag 

 inative child I had seen a young bird gaping 

 over the rim of its nest, stolidly greedy for a 

 worm, and instantly I had grasped, without 

 knowing it, one of the most fascinating prob 

 lems of life. 



It is the fashion for scientists to pretend to 

 ignore the value of the imagination, and to 

 loudly bawl for facts ; but all the knowing ones 

 wink under their bonnets and furtively indulge 

 in sublime guessing wherever the limitations 

 of knowledge are not set within the domain of 

 exactitude. Of course it would not become 

 me to say that a palaeozoic fish cannot be de 

 scribed accurately with no data at hand save 

 the fragment of a doubtful fin-spine upon 

 which to build the perfect anatomy, for has 

 not this been done, or something very like it ? 

 Still a rather lawless imagination can easily 

 enjoy the consternation with which certain 

 palaeontological pictures might be viewed by 

 their draughtsmen if the original whole could 

 suddenly appear in the place of the precious 

 fossil fragment. On the other hand, however, 

 some of the guesses of the comparative an 

 atomists may be flashes of truth revealed to 

 genius that is to a simple and healthy mind: 



It was years after my boyish adventure on the 

 cliffside that I recalled with startling vividness 

 its strange effect. Meantime I had been into 

 geology and biology and their cognate sciences. 



