INTRODUCTION 3 



by the peculiar attraction of their surroundings, especially 

 and above all by the migrant birds. To-day every county is 

 full of naturalists ; and the tiniest events of the year are 

 discovered by prying eyes and quickened ears : 



' To me the meanest flower that blows can give 

 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' 



It is so with all of us. Even Kant, that man of books and 

 pure intellect, so felt when he saw ' the infinite starry 

 heavens/ Even Napoleon, the mad man of action, so felt 

 when he saw the sun. But beyond this general and over- 

 whelming sense of communion, which no one escapes, the 

 zest of natural history lies in our own discoveries quite 

 independently of the accident whether or no some one has 

 made them before. Sir William Flower said of Mrs. 

 Brightwen, who extracted a new life out of natural history in 

 her garden : * What a pity it was that so much was already 

 known about the phenomena of natural history, since it 

 deprived Mrs. Brightwen of the credit she deserved as a 

 discoverer.' 



But there are still plenty of discoveries to be made. 

 English naturalists have excelled principally in studying 

 birds, the master interest of field observers. But the area 

 of popular observation widens rapidly. The extreme 

 marvels of instinct are to be seen among insects, especially 

 perhaps among beetles, of which really very little is known. 

 But Fabre, and Maeterlinck, and Tickner Edwards, and 

 indeed Grant Allen, have given accounts of insect life 

 which make the tales almost as exciting as biographies of 

 men of action. And they have proved persuasive. 



A quaint sign of the new interest is the production 

 of 'insect boxes,' which are set up in gardens just as bird 

 boxes, for the housing of bees, or other creatures, when they 



