MY WORK AND MY WORKSHOP 3 



mustn't be so cruel as to rob the poor mother of all her little 

 birds. Be a good boy, now, and promise not to touch the 

 nest.' 



From this conversation I learnt two things : first, that 

 robbing birds' nests is cruel and, secondly, that birds and 

 beasts have names just like ourselves. 



4 What are the names of all my friends in the woods and 

 meadows ? ' I asked myself. 4 And what does Saxicola 

 mean ? ' Years later I learnt that Saxicola means an in- 

 habitant of the rocks. My bird with the blue eggs was a 

 Stone-chat. 



Below our village there ran a little brook, and beyond the 

 brook was a spinney of beeches with smooth, straight trunks, 

 like pillars. The ground was padded with moss. It was in 

 this spinney that I picked my first mushroom, which looked, 

 when I caught sight of it, like an egg dropped on the moss 

 by some wandering hen. There were many others there, of 

 different sizes, forms, and colours. Some were shaped like 

 bells, some like extinguishers, some like cups : some were 

 broken, and were weeping tears of milk : some became blue 

 when I trod on them. Others, the most curious of all, were 

 like pears with a round hole at the top & sort of chimney 

 whence a whiff of smoke escaped when I prodded their under- 

 side with my finger. I filled my pockets with these, and made 

 them smoke at my leisure, till at last they were reduced to a 

 kind of tinder. 



Many a time I returned to that delightful spinney, and 

 learnt my first lessons in mushroom-lore in the company of 

 the Crows. My collections, I need hardly say, were not 

 admitted to the house. 



In this way by observing Nature and making experi- 

 ments nearly all my lessons have been learnt : all except 

 two, in fact. I have received from others two lessons of a 

 scientific character, and two only, in the whole course of my 

 life : one in anatomy and one in chemistry. 



I owe the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, 



