Insects. 3585 



When on some hot summer's day the dweller in London feels that 

 the accumulated toil of a year has reached its culminating point, and 

 he says he can stand it no longer; then, whether he be weighed down 

 with what Wordsworth calls "the dreary intercourse of daily life," the 

 dignity of labour or the labour of dignity, I would suggest a sojourn 

 to the New Forest, where, by the calm appliances of Nature, he will 

 find himself soothed and renovated for work to come. To the ento- 

 mologist it is scarcely necessary to do more than mention the name of 

 the place to call up visions of rare and beautiful insects : let him go 

 there, and he will find that his dreams have become realities, and that 

 there is no danger of his recreation being perverted into idleness. 

 And the mere lover of Nature — he who has not individualized the 

 perception of the beautiful within him, who looks at everything in the 

 mass, and possibly views an entomologist as a trifler and incapable of 

 rising to his level — he, too, may here, in the company of 



" Those green-vobed senators of mighty woods, 

 Tall oaks," 



find more food for high and holy thoughts than a watering-place, with 

 its London liveries and fashionable amusements, can afford. It would 

 be very desirable to imbue this very numerous class of general admir- 

 ers with more particular ideas of Nature's products, both for the be- 

 nefit of the individuals and science ; and, if I may judge from certain 

 experiences, I believe the general feeling of beauty in, and the special 

 observation of material objects, may both be cultivated in one and the 

 same person. T know the contrary to have been asserted ; Inglis, in 

 his ' Walks in many Lands,' says that " Botanists and mineralogists 

 are so intent upon their single avocation, that they are incapable of 

 that vague and undefined species of enjoyment which is swelled from 

 many sources, and is, I suspect, a full equivalent for hammering stones 

 or pulling flowers to pieces." Now a naturalist may not observe any- 

 thing more than the immediate objects of his inquiry, although then, 

 " I suspect," he has the advantage, even in the preliminary matters of 

 breaking stones or dissecting flowers ; but he is not thereby of neces- 

 sity unfitted to appreciate the general beauty and harmony of creation, 

 his perception of these being dependent upon his measure and exer- 

 cise of other and higher faculties than that of observation. A little 

 further on the same author says, " In my walk round St. Honorat I 

 saw the largest dragon-fly I ever met with ; I busied myself for some 

 time in endeavouring to catch it, not to stick a pin through it and 

 place it in my entomological case, but to return it to the citron blos- 

 X. 2 N 



