A DORSET DIARY 147 



problem, and I forbear to penetrate it except to suggest 

 that if nature be quite perfect, the absorbing interest 

 of evolution, that gradual infiltration of the spirit into 

 matter is destroyed and the future mortgaged. Our 

 joy in nature is born not only of her exceeding beauty, 

 but of that very imperfection which prescribes conflict 

 and glorifies its end. 



Assuredly, if we find mental, emotional and aesthetic 

 qualities in animals — and mind is no more a monopoly 

 of man than beauty — we occasionally find their corre- 

 lative, evil, the prerogative, in a complex form, of man.^ 



November 2nd. — The sea was running high and fast 

 to-day in bright, glad, highly-strung weather (like 

 Alexander Smith's day, strayed from its April home) 

 and riding and cresting the great curling waves was a 

 mass of herring gulls, partly on and partly above the 

 breakers, so that gulls and waves seemed of one sub- 

 stance, in a relationship by which their separate iden- 

 tities wavered and were exchanged. It was a sudden 

 apparition of the materialized spirit of wild freedom. On 

 the shingle, pied wagtails were running and singing, 

 so blended with the greys and high lights of the stones 

 that it was difficult to distinguish them. I notice that 

 the wren now often breaks oft his period short of the 

 trill. But the quality of the voice after the autumn 

 moult was very pure and sweet. The winter climate 

 here is so mild this year that Iambs are daily being 

 born and are abroad with their mothers well into the 

 dusk. 



November Srd. — In spite of the open country, larks 

 are rare here — both in summer and winter. It was 

 quite an event to meet with a small band of them. 

 Gluttony and " economic ornithology " are doing the 

 trick. The folly of the utilitarian spirit lately abroad 

 runs its ugliness very close. I remember passing some 

 allotments in the siimmer — the district shall be name- 



* See Romanes' [Mental Evolution of Animals] list of the emo- 

 tions of animals. The psychology of animals is also discussed 

 by Tyler, Simpson, Thomson, Dnimmond, Gamble, Julian 

 Huxley, Lloyd Morgan, and other philosophic biologists, not to 

 mention the suggestive correspondence columns of the Spectator. 



