Viii.] THE UNCONSCIOUS NATURALIST. 195 



to look over such good old books as Williams's " Wild 

 Sports of the East/' Campbell's " Old Forest Ranger," 

 Lloyd's " Scandinavian Adventures/' and last, but not 

 least, Waterton's " Wanderings/' to see what valuable 

 additions to true zoology the knowledge of live 

 creatures, not merely dead ones British sportsmen 

 have made, and still can make. And as for the 

 employment of time, which often hangs so heavily on 

 a soldier's hands, really I am ready to say, if you are 

 neither men of science, nor draughtsmen, nor sports- 

 men, why, go and collect beetles. It is not very 

 dignified, I know, nor exciting : but it will be some- 

 thing to do. It cannot harm you, if you take, as 

 beetle-hunters do, an indiarubber sheet to lie on ; and 

 it will certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will 

 be a noble humility in the act. You will confess to the 

 public that you consider yourself only fit to catch 

 beetles; by which very confession you will prove 

 yourself fit for much finer things than catching beetles; 

 and meanwhile, as I said before, you will be at least 

 out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack once, the 

 happiest officer I met, because the most regularly 

 employed, was one who spent his time in collecting 

 butterflies. He knew nothing about them scientifically 

 not even their names. He took them simply for 

 their wonderful beauty and variety ; and in the hope, 

 too in which he was really scientific that if he care- 

 fully kept every form which he saw, his collection 

 might be of use some day to entomologists at home. 

 A most pleasant gentleman he was ; and, I doubt not, 

 none the worse soldier for his butterfly catching. 

 Commendable, also, in my eyes, was another officer 

 whom I have not the pleasure of knowing who, on a 



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