A Naturalist's Boyhood 



AM enjoying a book, a picture, a 

 statue, or, say, a piece of music. 

 I know these to be the finished 

 works of the man or the woman, 

 but I invariably hark back to the 

 boy or the girl. 



What I want to discover is the 

 precise time, in the lives of cer- 

 tain boys and girls, when the steel first struck the flint, 

 the spark flew, and out streamed that jet of fire which 

 never afterwards was extinguished. 



I was reading an article entitled " Professor Wrig- 

 gler," written by Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, which 

 appeared in " Harper's Young People," in the number 

 of October 31, 1893. I need not tell you that both old 

 and young, at home and abroad, delight in reading what 

 Mr. Hamilton Gibson has written, because he was not 

 alone the most observant of naturalists, but a distin- 

 guished artist and a sympathetic author. 



He thus filled a peculiar position in the literary and 

 artistic world which is seldom given to any one man to 

 fill. Besides being a naturalist from his boyhood, he 

 was able to write better than most people what he 

 wished to write, and to illustrate his articles in a way 

 that was unique. Mr. Gibson's death a few days ago, 



