Art Out-of -Doors 



he would have trusted this, he would have 

 felt that one may learn more quickly, more 

 accurately, from print than from conversa- 

 tion, if he had ever examined the right kind 

 of books ; for in their pages not only the 

 name of his plant but its character, its 

 affinities, its life-history, v/ould at once have 

 been spread before him. 



A careless reader may be deluded by Jef- 

 feries's book into thinking that, as he en- 

 joyed so deeply and described so well, ig- 

 norance must be a blessing. But a more 

 careful reader will trace in every page the 

 record of a mutilation of pleasure, a limit- 

 ing of intelhgence, a loss of golden oppor- 

 tunities, due simply to a lack of elementary 

 scientific knowledge. Jefferies has left us a 

 delightful series of books about Nature ; 

 had he studied a little botany they would 

 have been twice as delightful to us, and he 

 would have got thrice as much delight as he 

 did get from their making. He was always 

 in some puzzle which he could not read — 

 some openly hidden'* puzzle which the 

 simplest book on botany would have read 

 for him. His naive confession of the fact 



342 



