206 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



So, go little book, farewell and " remember my little 

 fellow " not to be puffed up. For thou art but " a puny, 

 and an ailing brat " and so need all the education I have 

 given thee " in passing through the dreary vale of 

 <;riticism." " Thy path, my boy, is rough and thorny ; 

 be careful of thy steps." 



Though the education of this superb old gentleman, 

 this " fantastick great old man," as Lamb said of 

 Burton, was " more in bogs than in books," he makes 

 a naturalist of real knowledge and penetration, and 

 ever buoyant and eager to pour his richness of illus- 

 tration and analogy upon error and superstition. He 

 made war upon nothing except the miserable Swainson 

 and the Hanoverian rat, and was as humane a man and 

 1;ender a lover of the works of creation as he was sur- 

 prising a character. He knew his birds as well as he 

 loved them, and handled poisonous reptiles "as if he had 

 been leisurely selecting the sweetest bon-bon instead 

 of the most vigorous rattlesnake." Time and again he 

 has been proved wise in his generation by a later one. 

 He was, I believe I am right in saying, the first naturalist 

 to point out that humming-birds feed not only on the 

 nectar of flowers but the insects they find in them, and that 

 woodpeckers only attack a tree already bored by grubs. 

 He was indeed one of the first naturalists to have any 

 idea at all of the " web of life," of the poise and balance 

 of nature and of the intrinsic value of every species in 

 preserving them. In his way he was a prophet with 

 the method in the prophet's madness. Before him, the 

 natural history which discovers the meaning of life by 

 patient watching and sympathy instead of exploiting 

 it by the short cut through death to a barren knowledge 

 hardly existed. Whenever he fell in with snakes in the 

 jungle, whether poisonous or harmless, 



" I would contemplate them for a few minutes, ere I proceeded, 

 and would say ' gentlemen of rainbow colour, be not alarmed at 

 my intrusion, I am not come hither to attempt your lives nor to 

 offer wanton molestation. This boundless territory affords an 

 ample range to both yourselves and me. Our interests can never 

 tclash as though we were in commerce. So pray enjoy yourselves, 

 and let me do the same." 



