A NATURALIST'S BOYHOOD xv 
Latin name. The professor wrote me that if the peo- 
ple who were always annoying him with pictures of im- 
possible bugs would only send him as accurate a picture 
as was mine, he never would have any more bother." 
" Did you have any setbacks?" 
"Yes; and I haven't forgotten it up to to-day. I 
was always collecting, and I had brought together every 
insect I had found in my neighborhood. As I took 
them home I pinned them in the drawers of an old- 
fashioned bureau. In time the whole of the drawers, 
bottom and sides, were full of pinned specimens, and 
there was room for no more. I had saved enough 
money to buy a cabinet, and I went to New York and 
purchased one. When I returned home the first thing 
I did was to look at my precious collection. When I 
opened a drawer there was a confused mass of wings 
only. One single wretch of a black ant had got in, and 
had passed the word to 10,000 other black ants. They 
had eaten the bodies of my insects in all the drawers. 
That quite broke my heart." 
" But your writing. How did that come about?" I 
asked. 
" I don't think that you can develop in one direction 
only. You must unbosom yourself. You are forced to 
tell or to write about the things you have most at heart. 
When I was a small boy I wrote a book for myself, and 
called it * Botany on the Half-shell.' The first thing I 
ever wrote which was printed was an article for one of 
Messrs. Harper's publications, and I made the pictures 
for it. That was my debut." 
" Then your work went hand in hand?" 
" Certainly. The one was the stimulant of the other.. 
We all grew up together. The days spent in my room 
