CHAPTER VII. 

 The Memorable. 



Every naturalist can recall certain incidents in 

 his communion with nature, which have impressed 

 themselves upon his imagination with a vividness 

 that the lapse of time in no wise effaces, and 

 which he feels never will be effaced. They came 

 upon him with a power which at the moment 

 burnt-in the image of each in his remembrance; 

 and there they remain, and must remain while 

 memory endures, ever and anon starting up with 

 a palpable clearness that is all the more observa- 

 ble from the ever increasing dimness and vague- 

 ness into which the contemporary impressions are 

 fading. They form the great landmarks of his 

 life : they stand out like the promontories of some 

 long line of coast, bold and clear, though the 

 intervening shore is lost to view. 



Every close observer of natural phenomena is 

 familiar with such memorabilia, and those know 

 them best whose minds are most poetic in tem- 

 perament, most disposed to receive pleasurable 

 emotions from that which is new or strange, or 

 noble, or beautiful. Each has his own; he will 

 fail, perhaps, to communicate to another the same 

 impressions when he communicates the facts, be- 

 cause the halo with which the particular object 

 or incident is invested in his remembrance, depends 

 very greatly on the idiosyncrasy of his own mind, 

 or on some peculiar conditions of thought or feel- 

 ing with which that particular object was asso- 

 ciated. That which sent such a thrill of delight 

 lG(i 



