22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THOREAU. 



tions to the Natural History Society. &quot; Why should 

 I? To detach the description from its connections 

 in my mind would make it no longer true or valuable 

 to me; and they do not wish what belongs to it.&quot; 

 His power of observation seemed to indicate addi 

 tional senses. He saw as with microscope, heard as 

 with ear-trumpet, and his memory was a photographic 

 register of all he saw and heard. And yet none knew 

 better than he that it is not the fact that imports, but 

 the impression or effect of the fact on your mind. 

 Every fact lay in glory in his mind, a type of the 

 order and beauty of the whole. 



His determination on Natural History was organic. 

 He confessed that he sometimes felt like a hound or a 

 panther, and, if born among Indians, would have been 

 a fell hunter. But, restrained by his Massachusetts 

 culture, he played out the game in this mild form of 

 botany and ichthyology. His intimacy with animals 

 suggested what Thomas Fuller records of Butler the 

 apiologist, that &quot; either he had told the bees things 

 or the bees had told him.&quot; Snakes coiled round his 

 leg ; the fishes swam into his hand, and he took them 

 out of the water ; he pulled the woodchuck out of its 

 hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his protec- r 

 tion from the hunters. Our naturalist had perfect 

 magnanimity ; he had no secrets : he would carry you 

 to the heron s haunt, or even to his most prized bo 

 tanical swamp, possibly knowing that you could 

 never find it again, yet willing to take his risks. 



No college ever offered him a diploma, or a profes 

 sor s chair ; no academy made him its corresponding 

 secretary, its discoverer, or even its member. Per 

 haps these learned bodies feared the satire of his 

 presence. Yet so much knowledge of Nature s secret 



