HINTS TO COLLECTORS. 13 



sconce and religion at a time when scarcely any one 

 thought of them. When you have reached a convent in 

 the East, or a mission-station in the South Sea, you seem 

 to be nearer home. You feel that you are amongst 

 people whose sympathies incline into the same direction 

 as your own, the mode of living also beginning to tell 

 upon your animal spirits, and you fly to the library, 

 limited though it may be, to have an hour with the 

 great minds of civilization. 



Our stay at Lakeba being restricted to a few hours, I 

 made all possible haste to collect specimens of the vege- 

 tation. Quite a troop of boys followed, carrying baskets 

 which they made in an incredibly short space of time, 

 out of the leaves of the cocoa-nut palm. Determined 

 to collect everything we could lay hands on, we accumu- 

 lated about fifty different species, forming quite a load 

 for our young attendants. The true secret of making 

 comprehensive collections, whether of objects of any 

 kind or details of information, is to secure them if pos- 

 sible the first time on coming in contact with them. 

 One has it always in his power to reject what is worth- 

 less. To go on the principle that you may come to a 

 place where you can get them better, is an unsound one 

 to adopt, and one that often leads to mortification. 

 Not only do the eye and ear get accustomed to the 

 objects or facts of search, and the hand neglects to 

 secure them, because they no longer strike us as new, 

 but it often happens that they are extremely local, and 

 are never met with again. When I take up my abode 

 in a district, for the purpose of exploring it botanically 

 for instance, I begin by gathering the plants that grow 



