THE BOY AND THE WILD 313 



guinea-pig alike with the wild rat or rabbit. To the 

 town boy, the weasel stealing through a hedge is a 

 fellow-inhabitant of Paradise, and he is likely to watch 

 it, as a new boy does a prefect, to see what it will do. 

 And in a week, perhaps, he knows more about weasels 

 than the country boy has learnt in twelve years. His 

 advantage comes partly from the freshness of the 

 experience, partly from the more alert attitude of the 

 town mind, and partly from the new way of looking 

 at things, which has not yet made its way in the 

 country. In America, where new, high-pressure 

 towns are dumped in primeval forests, a similar 

 freshness of outlook seems to have produced a greater 

 friendliness for the animals. We remember the keen 

 bargaining between Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer for 

 the first click-beetle of spring, or some other creature, 

 brought into school, and the " School of the Woods " 

 style of natural history flourishes because it is 

 grounded in healthy, popular instincts. 



It does not need two generations to open our eyes 

 to the possibilities of the wild. The country boy, 

 who has spent a few years in town, is ready and 

 yearning to read the old fields like a palimpsest, with 

 much the more valuable document underneath. It is 

 like the yearning that we have for just one day in 

 school, with our grown intellect, and a boy's chances 

 for combat with the master. We have heard a few 

 things about trout or dragon-flies that we don't 

 wholly believe, but which we are anxious to verify, or 

 otherwise. We have seen some of the " kill-'em-at- 

 sight " animals in the Zoo, or walking about un- 

 commonly tame in the parks. We have broken the 

 bread of friendship with them, and can never look 



