136 THE HIND AGAIN 



No doubt anyone who has got as far as the second 

 chapter has formed the idea that this is to be a mere 

 collection of incidents and impressions, with comments 

 thereon, on a great variety of subjects — a book with- 

 out a plan, a sort of olla podrida. It is not so. When 

 I first observed the hind in Richmond Park my 

 thought was about its senses, which led me to com- 

 pare them with those of other animals, including 

 man; and as I possessed a store of my own observa- 

 tions on the subject, supplemented with others from 

 reading, I foresaw when I began to set them down 

 that a book would result. It then occurred to me 

 that in this work I would not follow the usual method 

 by setting down the heads or leading themes in their 

 proper order, then working them out. My own un- 

 methodical method would be to let the observation 

 and the thought carry me whithersoever it would. 



We know from Butler, if not from our own feeble 

 efforts at making poetry, that rhymes the rudders 

 are of verses by which they often steer their courses; 

 — a queer sort of rudder with a mind of its own to 

 carry us into places which we had no intention of 

 visiting! But it is quite true; and so with this rudder 

 of mine which takes me where it will, and if it over- 

 shoots the mark and goes back I must go back with 

 it. My plan then is an unplanned one, a picking up 

 as I go along of a variety of questions concerning the 

 senses, just as they rise spontaneously from what has 

 gone before. 



Having got thus far with my explanations I must 

 now throw over the mushroom-gathering simile, seeing 



