A NATURALIST'S BOYHOOD xv 



Latin name. The professor wrote me that if the peo- 

 ple who were always annoying him with pictures of im- 

 possible bugs would only send him as accurate a picture 

 as was mine, he never would have any more bother." 



" Did you have any setbacks?" 



"Yes; and I haven't forgotten it up to to-day. I 

 was always collecting, and I had brought together every 

 insect I had found in my neighborhood. As I took 

 them home I pinned them in the drawers of an old- 

 fashioned bureau. In time the whole of the drawers, 

 bottom and sides, were full of pinned specimens, and 

 there was room for no more. I had saved enough 

 money to buy a cabinet, and I went to New York and 

 purchased one. When I returned home the first thing 

 I did was to look at my precious collection. When I 

 opened a drawer there was a confused mass of wings 

 only. One single wretch of a black ant had got in, and 

 had passed the word to 10,000 other black ants. They 

 had eaten the bodies of my insects in all the drawers. 

 That quite broke my heart." 



"But your writing. How did that come about?" I 

 asked. 



" I don't think that you can develop in one direction 

 only. You must unbosom yourself. You are forced to 

 tell or to write about the things you have most at heart. 

 When I was a small boy I wrote a book for myself, and 

 called it ' Botany on the Half-shell.' The first thing I 

 ever wrote which was printed was an article for one of 

 Messrs. Harper's publications, and I made the pictures 

 for it. That was my debut." 



" Then your work went hand in hand?" 



" Certainly. The one was the stimulant of the other. 

 We all grew up together. The days spent in my room 



