34 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
one writes a book on the mammals of this 
island, which has no monkeys or lemurs, and man 
cannot be included in such works on account 
of an old convention or prejudice, he is obliged 
to give the proud first place to this very poor 
relation. 
It is his misfortune, since it would have been 
more agreeable to the general reader if he could 
have led off with some imposing beast—the extinct 
wolf or tusky wild boar, for example—or, better 
still, with the white cattle of Chillingham, or the 
roaring stag with his grand antlers. The last is 
an undoubted survival, one which, encountered in 
some incult place where it is absolutely free and 
wild, moves us to a strange joy —an inherited 
memory and a vision of a savage, prehistoric land 
of which we are truer natives than we can ever be 
of this smooth sophisticated England. The science 
of zoology could not have it so, since it does not 
and cannot take man and his mental attitude 
towards other forms of life into account—cannot 
consider the fact that he is himself an animal of 
prey, several feet high, with large eyes fitted to~ 
look at large objects, and that he measures and 
classifies all creatures by an instinctive rule and 
standard, mentally pitting his strength and ferocity 
against theirs. What a discrepancy, then, between 
things as seen by the natural man and as they 
appear in our scientific systems, which make the 
small negligible bat the leader of the procession of 
British beasts—even this repulsive little rearmouse, 
