io6 
NATURE NOTES 
to be found in the genial influences that the Selborne Society 
strives to preserve and diffuse. 
If, he continued, we want our town-bred children to grow up 
hale and lusty and right-minded, able to resist some of the 
morbid influences that will assail them in their career, we must 
secure to them ampler, freer, more intimate intercourse with 
Nature than they now enjoy. It is in early years that the true 
taste for Nature, the genuine enjoyment of her beauties and 
wonders, can be best created. The sense of beauty is vision 
raised to a higher power, and that enlargement of vision can, 
I believe, be best effected in early years by the study of 
Nature, in later years by the study of art. The child cut 
off from Nature is apt to grow up dead to much of the loveli- 
ness that lies around, insensible, perhaps, to higher and more 
precious intimations. Carlyle said that every wayside flower 
is an eye looking out of an infinite inner ocean of beauty, and 
it seems to me that by gazing in these floral eyes we may 
obtain glimpses of that ocean and of sublime realities that might 
otherwise remain hidden from us. But to read the flowers 
aright we must reverently study them. The eyes of a stranger 
have no message for us, but how full of meaning are the eyes 
we have learned to love, and so the flowers that are dumb to 
a passing glance may speak volumes to a tender contemplation. 
Sir John Cockburn seconded the motion, and said that Lord 
Avebury was rightly regarded as the High Priest of Nature 
and chief interpreter of her mysteries. Nature-study added a 
precious seeing to the eye and might almost be said to have 
given sight to the blind. It exercised a marvellous assuaging 
power over the sorrows of life, and this was well expressed by 
the poet Bryant : — 
“ To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty ; and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware.” 
The attitude of the lover of Nature, Sir John Cockburn 
continued, was not precisely that of the man of science. It was 
as much or more an affair of the heart than of the brain. The 
naturalist loved life and had little sympathy with post-mortem 
investigation. Above all, he viewed Nature as a whole withotit 
dissecting out any part. Half the charm was lost in separating 
an object from its surroundings. Emerson, in “Each and All,” 
wrote : — 
“ All are needed by each one, 
Nothing is fair or good alone. 
I thought the sparrow’s note from heaven, 
.Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; 
I brought him home in his nest at even ; 
lie sings the song, but it cheers not now. 
For 1 did not bring home the liver and sky ; — 
Jle .sang to my ear, they sang to my eye." 
