Sbrtfte^slPlotes 



— the shrike could wait! Volume after 

 volume was opened and browsed through 

 at haphazard. It was Hke a stroll in an 

 ancient and variegated wood smelling ol 

 moldy loam and damp, flower-haunted 

 stream-banks. How many thousand years 

 ago was it that Buffon flourished ! Surely 

 his tomes are as old as Homer's. The 

 myth about corn-seeds taken from the 

 Egyptian mummy-casket and growing 

 when planted in our day is made true in 

 Bufl"on's case. Out of his mildewed pages 

 fall spores of literary life, to germinate, 

 spring up, and bloom over wide areas of 

 modern aridity long occupied by the grim 

 skeletons of science. And while my shrike 

 sits yonder on the tipmost spray of an 

 orange-tree, patiently, nay stolidly, waiting 

 for me to have my fill of studying him, I 

 shall not fail to give the old naturalist some 

 meager but well-meant instalments of 

 what is due him. 



BuflFon's name is no longer one to con- 

 jure with in science, and those there be 

 who affect to make fun of his work; but 

 a few of us find the man himself one of 

 ii8 



