BLACKBIRDS, NIGHTINGALES, ETC. 333 



suggested by the word "evolution" and the names 

 of Darwin and Wallace. To have a true classifi- 

 catory system seems to be, now, the grand ideal of 

 the naturalist, and this, I suppose, must be called 

 a high one, though it is wonderful how, in some 

 modern works, the soul of it has been taken out of 

 the body, so that all has become dull and pedantic 

 again, though a flight of stairs higher up than some 

 fifty years ago. Thus can a matter seem rich or poor 

 as one or another treats of it. But habits and 

 instincts are as strongly inherited as structure, so 

 that, as it appears to me, the study of life is, even 

 from the orthodox scientific point of view, as impor- 

 tant as the study of death. Yet it is death that 

 most zoologists (as they call themselves) really revel 

 in, and, though they may not say so, one cannot 

 help feeling that they are a great deal happier and 

 more comfortable dissecting a body in their study 

 than studying a life out-of-doors. 



Even admitting that both ways of acquiring know- 

 ledge are equally efficacious and legitimate, yet this 

 is very clear, that the destruction of any species ends 

 both, in regard to it. We can no more dissect the 

 great auk or the dodo (or blow their eggs) now than 

 we can observe their habits. Thus it is not only 

 beauty, but knowledge also — how great and how 

 varied who can say? — that is being every day 

 drained out of the world, and against this there is, 

 as it seems to me, an insufficient protest on the part 

 of scientific men as a body. They care too little 

 about it. When they think of birds or beasts, it is 

 under glass cases in museums that their mind's eye 

 sees them, and if there is only a specimen — nay, a 



