240 STUDIES IN INSECT LIFE, ETC. 

 mollusc, yet Mr. Brooks strongly urged Mr. 

 Casaubon to unbend and take up the study of 

 conchology, although he had himself gone into 

 science a great deal and " saw it would not do." 

 In the " Doctor's Dilemma " the physicians talk 

 fluently and well about bacteria, but few of us 

 would trust Mr. Bernard Shaw to make a " pure 

 culture." In fact we can all talk a good deal 

 about a subject, and even more readily let a pup- 

 pet talk for us, without really knowing much 

 about it. Still there is no doubt that, as far as a 

 keen sportsman could study, under the conditions 

 of the time he lived in, Shakespeare had studied 

 nature at first hand. But it is as a sportsman, 

 not as a zoologist or even as a naturalist, that he 

 must be judged. Professor Raleigh tells us that 

 " it has been truly said that he was curiously 

 unobservant of animated nature." I doubt that 

 " truly." He certainly adopted many of the 

 traditions of the past without inquiry. Pro- 

 fessional writers on zoology in Elizabeth's time 

 did the same. That he misstated facts about the 

 nightingale and the cuckoo is true, but even in 

 this year of our Lord we have still much to learn 

 and much to discard in our knowledge of the 

 latter bird. If the " glittering poetry " of the 



