28 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



surface of the mud, and these spoils were brought home 

 in bottles and searched for hours drop by drop with the 

 microscope. The world of active, graceful, bustling life 

 thus revealed as one gazes for hours through the magic 

 tube of the microscope, is as remote from human civiliz- 

 ation as that uncovered at low tide on the seashore. 

 Many a worried City man, amongst them a great political 

 writer on the staff of a London daily, now passed from 

 among us, has found in this microscopic world — so 

 readily accessible even at his own study table — a release 

 from care,, a refreshing contact with unadulterated 

 natural things of life and beauty. My friend, I wan 

 Miiller, the writer referred to, was as discriminating a 

 judge of the shapes of wheel-animalcules as he was of 

 the faces of the politicians of Europe and South Africa ! 



There is another and much more difficult escape 

 from the grip and taint of civilization, which is that 

 effected by the explorer who penetrates into sparsely 

 inhabited wilds such as those of the Australian con- 

 tinent. ' Man is there, but in such small number (one to 

 every 450 square miles !), and in so primitive and child- 

 like a state, that he is not a disturbing element, but 

 simply one of the " fauna " — one of the curious animals 

 living there under the domination of Nature — not yet 

 " Nature's rebel," but submissive, unconscious, and a 

 more fascinating study for us than a'^y other of her 

 products. He shows us what manner of men were our 

 own remote ancestors. The hunters who have left their 

 flint implements in the earlier river gravels of Western 

 Europe were such men as these Australian natives now 

 are. Naked, using only sticks and chipped stones as 

 implements and weapons, destitute of crops or herds or 

 habitations, wandering from place to place in keen 

 search of food — small animals, birds, lizards, and grubs 



