24 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



perpetual mutations and conflict with hostile and 

 destructive forces, to perpetuate a form, a type, a 

 species for thousands and millions of years ! all 

 this was always present to my mind ; yet even so 

 it was but a lesser element in the complete feeling. 

 The main thing was the wonderfulness and eternal 

 mystery of life itself ; this formative, informing 

 energy this flame that burns in and shines through 

 the case, the habit, which in lighting another dies, 

 and albeit dying yet endures for ever ; and the 

 sense, too, that this flame of life was one, and of my 

 kinship with it in all its appearances, in all organic 

 shapes, however different from the human. Nay, 

 the very fact that the forms were unhuman but 

 served to heighten the interest ; the roe-deer, the 

 leopard and wild horse, the swallow cleaving the 

 air, the butterfly toying with a flower, and the 

 dragon-fly dreaming on the river ; the monster 

 whale, the silver flying-fish, and the nautilus with 

 rose and purple tinted sails spread to the wind. 



Happily for me the loss of this sense and feeling 

 was but a temporary one, and was recovered in the 

 course of the next two days, which I spent in the 

 woods and on the adjacent boggy heath, finding 

 many adders and snakes, also young birds and 

 various other creatures which I handled and played 

 with, and I could afford once more to laugh at 

 those who laughed at or were annoyed with me 

 on account of my fantastic notions about animals. 

 My next great adventure with an adder, which 

 came a year later, gave me so good a laugh that 



