24 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
perpetual mutations and conflict with hostile and 
destructive forces, to perpetuate a form, a type, a 
species for thousands and millions of years!—all 
this was always present to my mind; yet even so 
it was but a lesser element in the complete feeling. 
The main thing was the wonderfulness and eternal 
mystery of life itself; this formative, informing 
energy—this flame that burns in and shines through 
the case, the habit, which in lighting another dies, 
and albeit dying yet endures for ever; and the 
sense, too, that this flame of life was one, and of my 
kinship with it in all its appearances, in all organic 
shapes, however different from the human. Nay, 
the very fact that the forms were unhuman but 
served to heighten the interest;—the roe-deer, the 
leopard and wild horse, the swallow cleaving the 
air, the butterfly toying with a flower, and the 
dragon-fly dreaming on the river; the monster 
whale, the silver flying-fish, and the nautilus with 
rose and purple tinted sails spread to the wind. 
Happily for me the loss of this sense and feeling 
was but a temporary one, and was recovered in the 
course of the next two days, which I spent in the 
woods and on the adjacent boggy heath, finding 
many adders and snakes, also young birds and 
various other creatures which I handled and played 
with, and I could afford once more to laugh at 
those who laughed at or were annoyed with me 
on account of my fantastic notions about animals. 
My next great adventure with an adder, which 
came a year later, gave me so good a laugh that. 
