CH. XXXVIII ANGLO-GERMAN SOCIETY 209 



Arctic voyager, Dr, Nansen, was a guest, lately 

 returned from his famous Polar expedition. 



He was always keen to win his golf matches, 

 and his diary generally records their result — 

 with jubilation, if he were victorious — but he 

 was not so concentrated on the game as to be 

 incapable of interest in its natural surroundings. 

 The present Lord Selby, son of the late Speaker, 

 told me that he was amazed, when playing golf 

 with him at Richmond, to see him take a small 

 bottle from his pocket, fill it with water from 

 a pond on the course, cork it up again, and put 

 it back into his pocket. His purpose was to 

 examine the water under the microscope in order 

 to discover what small animal or vegetable life 

 it might contain. I have never seen him do 

 this, but at North Berwick, when the waiting, 

 in the congested state of the green, has seemed 

 interminable, I have seen him occupy the weary 

 intervals by taking a lens from his pocket and 

 examining the stones of one of the walls that 

 cross the course, in order to ascertain the 

 species to which the lichen belonged that grew 

 on it. 



His artist brother-in-law tells a story of him, 

 that once, when they were together at the Louvre, 

 admiring its priceless beauties, Lord Avebury 

 suddenly became absorbed in contemplation of 

 a tiny fossil shell in the stone base of one of the 

 statues. To the mingled amusement and distress 

 of the brother-in-law's artist soul, he evinced 

 an interest in this little shell far keener than in 

 all the masterpieces of art which the great gallery 

 contained. 



VOL. II p 



