AN EXPLANATOEY STATEMENT 11 



Perhaps what appealed to me most of all was that I was 

 able to employ Dr. Johnson's plucky and illuminating 

 words " Sir, to leave things out of a book, merely because 

 people tell you they will not be believed, is meanness." 

 Therefore, I gaily embarked upon my collection and intro- 

 duction without having any more right to approach the 

 subject than the printer, or proof reader, or office boy. If 

 asked to say what was the net result of the stories, I 

 might have said of all concerned, including the cor- 

 respondents, who were generally untheorizing observers, 

 what was once said by a triumphant agnostic, a very 

 small boy, in the police court when the magistrate asked 

 if he knew where he would go to if he told a lie : "I 

 dunno, nor you dunno, nor none of us dunno." That, 

 I think, honestly was the attitude of the great majority 

 of those responsible for the Spectator stories. 



Now comes Mr. Massingham to take up the tale an 

 investigator blessed with the power to join a real sense of 

 literature and an apt felicity of style to a deep knowledge 

 of natural history. What is as important as knowledge, 

 he has a wide sympathy and understanding of animal 

 life. Finally, he is himself an observer as well as a critic 

 and expounder of the observations of others. In his 

 masterly introduction to the present book, and still more in 

 the remarkable notes which he adds to almost each letter, 

 he puts the dots on the z's as well as they could have been 

 put. We have all seen in a dim way that there was some- 

 thing curious and something worth observing and recording 

 in these stories. He goes a great deal further than that. 

 He weighs and computes their exact value, tells us where 

 they lead to, and shows when and how they may be taken 

 as sign-posts to further lines of investigation. 



