ON THE PROWL. 
3 
mentators and editors, who toil to shed such light as they 
may on the text, or, oftener, on each other. Lastly, there 
is your collector, who makes extracts. I esteem all these 
laborious men and feel grateful to them and rejoice that I 
am none of them, for I hold with Matthew Arnold, that the 
best use to which you can put a good book is to read and 
enjoy it. So I take my gun, or net, and go where the 
leaves are spread. The gun and net I would gladly leave 
behind, but they cannot altogether be dispensed with. 
Without a collection a man’s knowledge of natural history 
becomes nebulous and his pursuit of it dilettante. I am 
sorry it is so, for in spirit I am a Buddhist. But, alas ! 
every Buddhist is not a Buddha 
“ The squirrel leaped 
Upon his knee, the timid quail led forth 
Her brood between his feet, and blue doves pecked 
The rice grains from the bowl beside his hand.” 
They will not treat you and me so, not though we sit as 
motionless as the horned owl, and repeat the mystic syllable 
om after the most saintly fashion, in low eruptive snorts : it 
conciliates nothing but the jungle mosquito and the red ant. 
For the rest, if you want to know them, you must resort to 
harsh measures. But do not let yourself get hardened 
B 2 
