PREFACE. ix 



well armed with argument, then you may find in Mr. White's 

 book a number of facts which will give plenty of occasion for 

 exercising ingenuity. He will do more ; he will suggest to you 

 the way in which to make original notes the spirit in which to 

 look at nature. Part of his success was owing to his coming to 

 the field with a mind unoccupied. He was not full of evolution 

 when he walked out, or variation, or devolution, or degeneration. 

 He did not look for microbes everywhere. His mind was free 

 and his eye open. To many it would do much good to read 

 this work if only with the object of getting rid of some of the 

 spiders' webs that have been so industriously spun over the 

 eyesight of those who would like to think for themselves. 

 " The quiet end of evening smiles 



Miles on miles," 



all across these pages. The shadows are stealing out ; the 

 hares are shaking their ears and thinking of the coming ramble, 

 and the jar of the night hawk is heard in the fern, but he will 

 not rise yet to pursue the moths ; the red cattle have ceased to 

 low ; the red stags in Wolmer Forest are glad that the heat of 

 the day is passed, and the happy cool of night is within thought ; 

 but still the sun stays. The sun stays, leaning on his staff, and 

 looking back over the world as a man might do at the last hill 

 of his journey. There is no haste. You may go down the 

 green lane very slowly, and pull the rushes, and gather the sedge- 

 like grasses, and note how some flowers have closed their petals 

 and some remain open. The swallows are the busiest. Mr. 

 White took much interest in swallows. Not only one evening 

 or two evenings, but a whole year of evenings, and several years, 

 are written in these letters. So quiet, without excitement he 

 is ready to wait till next year, or a series of years, to verify any- 

 thing he supposed might be ; something so entirely opposed to 

 the modern lecturer. He gathered his facts very slowly ; they 

 were like experience, which takes a lifetime to grow. You 

 cannot sit down and make up experience, and write it as a 

 thesis ; it must come, and this is what he did he waited till 

 things came. His book, for this reason, reads as if it had 

 been compiled in the evening. 



