Becreations in Natural History. 351 



RECREATIONS IN NATURAL HISTORY. 



Conveeting science into a recreation is by no means to be des- 

 pised, as some <e budge doctors of the stoic fur" might be 

 disposed to assert ; and the foundations of accurate knowledge 

 and profound study have often been laid in the casual atten- 

 tion bestowed for the mere sake of amusement upon some 

 curious or striking natural fact. It is indeed an excellent plan 

 to present the recreational aspects of science first, and leave 

 the inevitable hard work to be encountered after the student 

 has obtained a glimpse of the fascinations that await him when 

 he has passed from the wilderness of ignorance into the pro- 

 mised land of knowledge and truth. Dry treatises adapted to 

 the school or the college might give the requisite start to a 

 small number of determined workers ; but the only way to 

 raise up a large body of students of natural science, and to 

 create a general interest in such questions throughout society 

 is to make them a pleasurable exercise, in which large numbers 

 can easily engage. This is the great function of the better 

 class of popular works, in which the elements of experimental 

 or descriptive science are exhibited in an entertaining guise. 

 Some men fancy they must be learned because they are tire- 

 some, and sneer at any knowledge that is not reduced to its 

 most repulsive technical form. They would degrade natural 

 history to an insufferable catalogue of long-tailed names, and 

 try to persuade themselves and the public that the observation 

 of character and habits is unimportant, and that the one thing 

 needful is to acquire the art of arranging objects upon a 

 system, so as to put them into the right pigeon-hole as soon as 

 they are seen. Systems of nomenclature and classification are 

 no doubt indispensable, but they do not constitute science. 

 They are only part of its mechanism, and of no intellectual 

 worth, unless they are associated with clear and positive ideas 

 of structure, development, and modes of life. 



Natural history may be approached in a popular and amus- 

 ing manner in two ways. According to the first, the objects 

 may be viewed in relation to habit and structure ; and accord- 

 ing to the second, in relation to the use or mischief thoy do to 

 man. Books of great interest have been written upon both 

 plans, and form no small proportion of the healthy literature 

 which our age provides for family reading. To be successful 

 they demand on the part of their writers considerable acquire- 

 ments, coupled with the happy art of presenting the salient 

 points of their subject in an intelligible and pleasing light. 

 Mr. Wood has recently added to his labours in the first of 

 these departments a very pleasantly written work, now appear- 



