ON BOYHOOD DAYS 



ences to the beauties of field and trees and flowers, 

 the songs of birds, the piping of the frogs, and all 

 the homely manifestations of animate nature that 

 appeal to the eye and ear that are receptive to 

 them. 



So, as was said, it was perhaps inevitable that 

 sooner or later an occupation should be taken up 

 that would bring me hourly in contact with nature. 

 But it was not until my twenty-first year that I 

 entered specifically on the work, although of 

 course I had been trained in all the tasks of the 

 gardener and fruit grower on my father's farm 

 from earliest childhood. 



I had all along been serving an apprenticeship 

 that stood me in good stead now that the work of 

 market gardener and seed raiser was taken up as 

 a business. 



Yet it is not certain that I should have been led 

 to put this knowledge to practical use at this time 

 had it not been for the stimulation and fresh 

 enthusiasm that came from the reading of an 

 extraordinary book. This book was Darwin's 

 Animals and Plants Under Domestication. The 

 work was first published, it will be recalled, in 

 1868. It probably fell into my hands a year or so 

 later. It came to me with a message that was not 

 merely stimulating but compelling. It aroused my 

 imagination, gave me insight into the world of 



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