A Naturalist's Boyhood 
AM enjoying a book, a picture, a 
statue, or, say, a piece of music. 
I know these to be the finished 
works of the man or the woman, 
but I invariably hark back to the 
boy or the girl. 
What I want to discover is the 
precise time, in the lives of cer- 
tain boys and girls, when the steel first struck the flint, 
the spark flew, and out streamed that jet of fire which 
never afterwards was extinguished. 
I was reading an article entitled " Professor Wrig- 
gler," written by Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, which 
appeared in " Harper's Young People," in the number 
of October 31, 1893. I need not tell you that both old 
and young, at home and abroad, delight in reading what 
Mr. Hamilton Gibson has written, because he was not 
alone the most observant of naturalists, but a distin- 
guished artist and a sympathetic author. 
He thus filled a peculiar position in the literary and 
artistic world which is seldom given to any one man to 
fill. Besides being a naturalist from his boyhood, he 
was able to write better than most people what he 
wished to write, and to illustrate his articles in a way 
that was unique. Mr. Gibson's death a few days ago, 
