Night- Butter flies and Day-Moths. 1 9 1 



character made, can deliberately, and in cold blood, set 

 about putting himself in a business-like way in sympathy 

 with nature. Such attempts end in mere sentimentalism, 

 gush, and vulgarity. His love of nature must have been 

 acquired when a boy. It can only come from association 

 with wild things : the handling of flowers and birds' eggs, 

 and butterflies ; the watching creatures going to and fro about 

 their daily duties and pleasures " idling," in fact, as some 

 people call it, in the open air. Now, no grown-up man can 

 methodically commence doing that. He has other things 

 to attend to. But any adult can make up in three years, if 

 he chooses, for the mathematical deficiencies of his teens. 



Arithmetic has, by that time, sufficiently taught itself. 

 Euclid turns out to be only common-sense. As for algebra, 

 I have never been able to trace its influence anywhere 

 either in conversation, business, or literature. It may be 

 very useful, just as writing lessons may be in " caligraphy," 

 in which O thrice-excellent Sellick, you will bear me out 

 I achieved as a boy considerable honours, my round-hand 

 being (even to this day) a thing of beauty. And yet, gentle 

 reader, I feel inclined sometimes to sit down and out of the 

 fulness of my heart weep when I think of the kind of manu- 

 script which I send in to printers. Those of my own house- 

 hold even cannot sometimes decipher my writing if I may 

 call it such. It is simply execrable. So that my writing- 

 lessons have not permanently advantaged me any more than 

 my evasive treatment of " Euclid " has injured me. 



But there was something which I learned when at school 

 which has never left me, and to which I am largely indebted 

 for such measure of success as may have attended me, and 

 that is " sympathy " with all sorts and conditions of creatures, 

 founded upon a just appreciation of them itself based on 

 sound, first-hand, though assuredly very " unscientific " know- 

 ledge. I have learnt all my natural history from nature, 

 who is the most unscientific teacher possible. 



