294 BIRDS AND MAN 



matters which once engaged his attention, also the 

 little book he gave to the world so long ago, there 

 would still remain another subject to be mentioned 

 about which I should feel somewhat shy namely, 

 the marked difference in manner, perhaps in feeling, 

 between the old and new writers on animal life and 

 nature. The subject would be strange to him. On 

 going into particulars, he would be surprised at the 

 disposition, almost amounting to a passion, of the 

 modern mind to view life and nature in their aesthetic 

 aspects. This new spirit would strike him as some- 

 thing odd and exotic, as if the writers had been 

 first artists or landscape-gardeners, who had, as 

 naturalists, retained the habit of looking for the 

 picturesque. He would further note that we moderns 

 are more emotional than the writers of the past, or, 

 at all events, less reticent. There is no doubt, he 

 would say, that our researches into the kingdom of 

 nature produce in us a wonderful pleasure, unlike in 

 character and perhaps superior to most others ; but 

 this feeling, which was indefinable and not to be 

 traced to its source, was probably given to us for a 

 secret gratification. If we are curious to know its 

 significance, might we not regard it as something 

 ancillary to our spiritual natures, as a kind of sub- 

 sidiary conscience, a private assurance that in all 



