ii8 First Conference 



old soldier, even a city labourer. And in so far as I 

 could personally still feel myself a naturalist at all 

 among such masters, it was because of a child- 

 experience more or less like theirs — because long 

 before the experiences of zoological stations, of 

 tropical seas, indeed as far back as I can remem- 

 ber, I have lain beside a little wayside pool and 

 watched the water-measurers dancing on the surface, 

 the caddises creeping on the sandy bottom six inches 

 below. My botanical interests similarly go back, far 

 beyond any of the greater scenes of Nature, to the 

 nearest bit of woodland — a path among tall firs 

 opening upon a little glade. Before ever seeing the 

 great European gardens of science and of art I had 

 learned the vital essential of anything I may now 

 know or practise or teach of gardens, by trotting at 

 my father's heels wuth a tiny barrow and helping him 

 now to plant his potatoes and his primroses, or again 

 to fight the weeds. I have had a good microscope 

 and no lack of material this many a day; but never 

 have I been richer or happier than with my first poor 

 instrument, and a few small bottles of dirty water. 

 And though I have not chanced much to cultivate 

 entomology or mineralogy or palaeontology, I feel 

 myself even now ready for rapid initiation into any 

 of the learned guilds, since in each I have had the 

 true novitiate and know the *' Open Sesame ". That 

 is, I have chipped out for myself quartz crystals from 

 the quarry, agates from the cliff, fossils from the bed, 

 and have captured at the right age my own box and 

 a half of butterflies. 



In this generous ministry of nature to the growing 

 brain through each and all its sensory gates lies the 



