PREFACE 



It is necessary that a book should have a title, and 

 important that this should be descriptive of the book : 

 accordingly, I was pleased with my good fortune and 

 myself when I hit upon one which was not merely 

 descriptive but was attractive as well. 



This was a long time ago when these studies, 

 essays and sketches of animal life began to accumu- 

 late on my hands and I foresaw the book. Unhappily, 

 long before my book was ready my nice title had 

 occurred to some one else and was duly given by Sir 

 E. Ray Lankester to his Diversions of a Naturalist 

 — a collection of papers on a vast variety of subjects 

 which had been appearing serially under another title. 

 I was very much annoyed, not only because he is 

 a big man and I am a little one and my need was 

 therefore greater, but also because it appeared to me 

 better suited to my book than to his. He deals with 

 the deep problems of biology and is not exactly. a 

 naturalist in the old original sense of the word — one 

 who is mainly concerned with the "life and conversa- 

 tion of animals," and whose work is consequently more 

 like play than his can be, even when it is Science from 

 an Easy Chair. 



