THE BRITISH NATURE BOOK, .. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

 "In the Beginning." 



MANY years ago a famous book was written Madame How and Lady 

 Why : it was an attempt to answer many of the questions which arise in a 

 child's mind concerning the things round about him. 



Sooner or later, similar questions are bound to arise in the mind of every 

 one who loves to observe Nature ; but the biggest of all is the old, old question, 

 concerning which wise men of all ages have written, and thought, and spent 

 their labour " Where did the life which we see round about us come from ? " 

 or, as the query frames itself in the mind of a little child, " Who made the 

 flower, the butterfly, the fox ? " 



There has never been any answer except that contained in the first verse 

 of the first chapter of the first book in that sacred library which we call the 

 Bible 



" IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH." 



Now most of the grown-up folks who have reached middle life were taught 

 when they were children that what follows after that grand statement in the 

 first few chapters of Genesis was literally true, and that God made the world 

 and all that is in it, one thing after another, in six days, as a man might set 

 himself to make toys. So we were taught that all this was as much a piece of 

 actual history as the building of Eddystone Lighthouse, or the making of the 

 first phonograph. 



To-day we know better, and though we still believe that " in the begin- 

 ning God created the heaven and the earth," we have learned that the story 

 that follows is a wonderful parable or allegory a story told originally, ages 

 ago, and perhaps in words far less beautiful, by the bygone ancestors of the 

 Jewish race people who, compared with the present generation, were but 

 children, knowing nothing of science or history, nothing of geology or biology. 

 Age by age, this ancient story was repeated by story-tellers round camp-fires, 

 or round sacred trees in villages and hamlets, until unknown men, inspired by 



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