72 A NATURE WOOING. 



in woods and fields, when I wa's learning for the 

 first time lessons from nature lessons purer, nobler 

 and better than I ever expect to learn from the books 

 of man lessons showing me the close relationship 

 existing among all animate and inanimate things- 

 teaching me that this world, this universe of ours, is 

 not made up of single, isolated objects and forces, 

 but that each object, each force is but a necessary 

 part of one grand and perfect whole. At the end of 

 fifteen years I am still a tyro still learning daily 

 new facts from the book of nature, still, and ever ex- 

 pect to be, a tramp naturalist. I still delight to chase 

 the winged butterfly o'er field and pasture ; draw the 

 seine through ripple and shallow for silvery minnow 

 and rainbow darter climb hill and wade pond for 

 partridge berry or water lily, or wander all day 

 through thicket and forest in search of hermit thrush 

 and hooded warbler. 



I am not a specialist in any branch of natural his- 

 tory, nor do I ever expect to be one. I do not desire 

 to spend my life in pondering over the synonymy, 

 and studying the minute structure of the organs of 

 some particular group of animal or plant life. The 

 world at large will never know me as an eminent 

 ichthyologist or botanist, ornithologist or entomolo- 

 gist, geologist or conchologist, but I wish to know 

 myself as being, in a small way, an ichtho-bota-orni- 

 geo-concho-entom-etc.-gist, and so be able to see more 

 and more clearly as time goes on the mutual relations 



