34 A SHARP LOOKOUT. 



possess before. You may go to the fields and the 

 woods, and gather fruit that is ripe for the palate 

 without any aid of yours, but you cannot do this in 

 science or in art. Here truth must be disentangled 

 and interpreted ; must be made in the image of man. 

 Hence all good observation is more or less a refining 

 and transmuting process, and the secret is to know the 

 crude material when you see it. I think of Words- 

 worth's lines : 



" The mighty world 

 Of eye and ear, both what they half create, and what perceive ; " 



which is as true in the case of the naturalist as of the 

 poet; both "half create" the world they describe. 

 Darwin does something to his facts as well as Tenny- 

 son to his. Before a fact can become poetry, it must 

 pass through the heart or the imagination of the poet ; 

 before it can become science, it must pass through the 

 understanding of the scientist. Or one may say, it is 

 with the thoughts and half-thoughts that the walker 

 gathers in the woods and fields, as with the common 

 weeds and coarser wild flowers which he plucks for a 

 bouquet, wild carrot, purple aster, moth mullein, 

 sedge grass, etc. : they look common and uninterest- 

 ing enough there in the fields, but the moment he sep- 

 arates them from the tangled mass, and brings them 

 indoors, and places them in a vase, say of some choice 

 glass, amid artificial things, behold, how beautiful ! 

 They have an added charm and significance at once ; 

 they are defined and identified, and what was com- 

 mon and familiar becomes unexpectedly attractive. 



