an ambition had I, in early days, set before myself. 

 To be a traveller on the great scale ; a visitor 

 of remote solitudes, and practically untrodden 

 shores ; a discoverer of undescribed forms ; a 

 rifler of Nature's still unrifled treasure-houses 

 such was the hope, and such the happy dream. 

 The words "Unknown to science" floated in 

 those days before my youthful fancy, and were 

 to it a shibboleth, as other and more obviously 

 stimulating words have been to other youthful 

 brains. Fate has not willed that any such re- 

 sounding lot should be mine, nor was it, to tell 

 the truth, particularly likely that it should so will 

 it. To few of our race has it been given to add, 

 by even a little, to the -knowledge of that race, 

 and I am not aware that any portion of my own 

 equipment had particularly marked me out for 

 this role that I had so confidently assigned to 

 myself. 



Luckily we learn to grow down gracefully, as 

 the sedums and the pennyworts do. A lot that 

 at ten years old seems unendurably pitiful in its 

 narrowness, at five times that mature age comes 

 to be regarded as quite a becoming lot, leaving 

 room for plenty of easy self-respect, and even for 

 a spurt or two of the purest and most invigorat- 

 ing vanity. As that down-growing process ad- 

 vances we assure ourselves, more and more 

 confidently, that all the really important, the 

 vital part of such explorations belongs to us, at 



