NATURES APPEAL. 
39 
One is impressed by the intensity of the feelings with which 
great naturalists appear to regard their favourite study. I say 
great naturalists because it is only the well-known men, men 
who have written, from whom we have any record at all ; but 
this by no means shows that the feeling is less intense in others 
who have ne^er described their feelings. The "sacred fury," how- 
ever, does not begin as a mere desire to investigate Nature. It 
frequently takes the form, at first, of a passion for " collecting," 
especially for collecting difficult or rare objects. This impulse, 
which certainly often appears to initiate the naturalist's career, 
has, strictly speaking, little to do with Natural History study. 
It is a hobby, sometimes almost a craze. If you wish to see 
how powerful is this instinct you have only to see a boy risking 
his life after birds' eggs, or see how all feelings of fastidi- 
ousness or cleanliness are completely abolished when he is digging 
out a sexton beetle from underneath a putrid and decaying carcase 
of a rabbit, or the joy with which a rare slug, or, perhaps, a 
mouse that has been dead, say, four days, will be put into his 
pocket where he carries his lunch and his handkerchief. 
The great John Hunter possessed this collector's appetite alt 
his life. A letter of his to a friend in Africa illustrates this very 
well. After requesting the friend to catch some swallows for him, 
he asks for an ostrich's egg just about to be hatched, with the 
shell crushed and the whole put in spirit. He then goes on, " If 
the foal of a camel was put into a tub of spirits and sent, I should 
be glad. Is it possible to get a young tame lion, or indeed any 
other beast or bird ? If cameleons are sent it should be in the 
Spring. ... I want everything respecting the bee tribe, such 
as wasps with their nests, also hornets with theirs, &c." "The 
friend in Africa " must have had a busy time if he shipped off 
this Noah's collection. 
Richard Jefferies was a born naturalist, and again and again 
attempts to describe the chain which bound him to Nature. He was 
a great sportsman, and probably it was this which first led him 
to study animals. He has written a graphic account of the first 
snipe he shot. He says ("The Amateur Poacher," p. 181) "the 
emotion, for it was more than excitement, of that moment will 
never pass from memory." He felt the enchantment of animals. 
In his book called " The Open Air " (p. 126) he gives a description 
of the effect of the hare upon him, which, he says, "causes quite 
a different feeling " from rabbits or pheasants, and he attributes 
this to the fact, amongst others, that it is perfectly wild, unfed, 
untended, and then he is the largest animal to be shot in the fields." 
Here you have an example of the attraction of the really wild 
life, and the sportsman's instinct to kill, leading on insensibly to the 
loving study of the animal he destroys. Nature appealed to Richard 
Jefferies in that mysterious manner in which old instincts do appeal. 
He, like so many others, hears the voice of Pan, " I was utterly 
alone with the sun and earth," he says in one passage ("The 
Story of My Heart"), " Lying down on the grass I spoke in my 
soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea . 
