viii.] WORK ON FOREIGN STATIONS. 193 



no fact is really unimportant ; and more, that while 

 plodding patiently through seemingly unimportant 

 facts, you may stumble on one of infinite importance, 

 both scientific and practical. For the student of nature, 

 gentlemen, if he will be but patient, diligent, metho- 

 dical, is liable at any moment to the same good fortune 

 as befell Saul of old, when he went out to seek his 

 father's asses, and found a kingdom. 



There are those, lastly, who have neither time nor 

 taste for the technicalities and nice distinctions of 

 formal Natural History; who enjoy Nature, but as 

 artists or as sportsmen, and not as men of science. 

 Let them follow their bent freely : but let them not 

 suppose that in following it they can do nothing to- 

 wards enlarging our knowledge of Nature, especially 

 when on foreign stations. So far from it, drawings 

 ought always to be valuable, whether of plants, 

 animals, or scenery, provided only they are accurate ; 

 and the more spirited and full of genius they are, the 

 more accurate they are certain to be ; for Nature being 

 alive, a lifeless copy of her is necessarily an untrue 

 copy. Most thankful to any officer for a mere sight of 

 sketches will be the closest botanist, who, to his own 

 sorrow, knows three-fourths of his plants only from 

 dried specimens; or the closest zoologist, who knows 

 his animals from skins and bones. And if any one 

 answers But I cannot draw. I rejoin, You can at 

 least photograph. If a young officer, going out to 

 foreign parts, and knowing nothing at all about 

 physical science, did me the honour to ask me what 

 he could do for science, I should tell him Learn to 

 photograph ; take photographs of every strange bit of 

 rock -formation which strikes your fancy, and of every 

 SO. 



