4 WILD TRAITS IN TAME ANIMALS. 



certain of his professional associates. This was 

 probably more true ten years ago than it is to-day, 

 and it is to be hoped that advancing civilisation 

 will remove such causes of offence. But any one 

 who has studied the habits of that uncompro- 

 mising vertebrate, the Learned Official, when he 

 deigns to mix with common folk at British Associ- 

 ation meetings and elsewhere, will probably have 

 observed that certain members of the order treat 

 their less exalted fellow-workers with a somewhat 

 disdainful patronage. Doubtless this is partly due 

 to a temporary combination of youthfulness and 

 authority among some of the leaders of the new 

 movement, which has resulted from rapid pro- 

 gress. But there seems also a tendency on the 

 part of a larger number of professional naturalists 

 to assume fftiasz-ma.nona.] rights in certain regions 

 of nature's kingdom. It is apparently a natural 

 law that wherever the members of a corporation 

 become the licensed exponents of a subject — 

 whether it be divinity, natural science, or what 

 you will — they develop the spirit of the custodian, 

 if not of the proprietor, and tend to regard all 

 others who meddle with it with a certain amount 

 of jealousy. 



But it will be a disastrous day for science if 



