INTRODUCTION. 5 



ear. Sympathy is one of the great and beautiful bonds of 

 life to life. Without sympathy you cannot study even a 

 humble-bee aright. I heard the other day a story, which is 

 perhaps worth repeating, of a young pupil-teacher who 

 was dealing in stern severity with a class of somewhat 

 refractory small urchins. " Don't you think," said a 

 clergyman standing near, " that you would be more 

 successful if you showed a little more sympathy ? I am 

 sure you would lead them to obey you more readily." 

 " Sir," replied the pupil-teacher, " I bend them to my will." 

 Now do not, I beg you, go and study nature in that spirit. 

 It is one of the peculiarities of nature that she will not be 

 moulded to one's will. One must humour her. If you 

 refuse to put yourself into sympathy with her, you may as 

 well let her alone. But if you do go to work sympathetic- 

 ally that is, moulding your spirit to hers you will 

 induce her to whisper you the very secrets of her heart. 

 I am sure that if you will only thus study nature you will 

 rind that you have added a new joy to life. 



Not only so. I am persuaded that your appreciation of 

 literature will be deepened. In descriptions of nature, 

 you will be able to distinguish true gold from baser metal. 

 You will see the force of a hundred analogies, which 

 would otherwise have escaped you. Our great modern 

 writers have nearly always been students of nature, and 

 he only can rightly appreciate their works who is also a 

 student of nature. \/ 



It has been said that the antithesis to poetry is not 

 prose, but science. And there is truth in the saying. A 

 scientific interpretation of nature often differs widely from 

 a poetic interpretation of nature. But I trust that it does 

 not necessarily follow that the man of science is incapable 

 of appreciating poetry, or that the poet is and must be 

 antagonistic to scientific investigation. The latter is 



