EARLY LOVE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 3 



things, was an intellectual tendency, and not 

 simply a child's disposition to find friends 

 and playmates in the animals about him. In 

 later years her sympathy gave her the key to 

 the work of his manhood, as it had done to 

 the sports of his childhood. She remained 

 his most intimate friend to the last hour of 

 her life, and he survived her but six years. 



Louis's love of natural history showed itself 

 almost from infancy. When a very little fel- 

 low he had, beside his collection of fishes, all 

 sorts of pets : birds, field-mice, hares, rabbits, 

 guinea-pigs, etc., whose families he reared with 

 the greatest care. Guided by his knowledge 

 of the haunts and habits of fishes, he and his 

 brother Auguste became the most adroit of 

 young fishermen, using processes all their 

 own and quite independent of hook, line, or 

 net. Their hunting grounds were the holes 

 and crevices beneath the stones or in the 

 water-washed walls of the lake shore. No 

 such shelter was safe from their curious fin- 

 gers, and they acquired such dexterity that 

 when bathing they could seize the fish even in 

 the open water, attracting them by little arts 

 to which the fish submitted .is to a kind of 

 fascination. Such amusements are no doubt 

 the delight of many a lad living in the coun- 



