2 
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL. 
is very human. Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in 
secret is pleasant. 
I have long since given up the pastime of prying into the 
secret ways of my kind, and to crawl under furniture would 
now be irksome to me ; but I wander into the jungle, 
where “ things that own not man’s dominion dwell,” and 
there I prowl, climb into a tree, sit under a bush, or lie on 
the grass, and watch the ways of my fellow - creatures, 
seeing but unseen, or, if seen, not regarded ; for beasts and 
birds and creeping things, except when they fear man, 
ignore him, and so they go about their various occupations, 
their labours and their amusements, without affectation and 
without self-consciousness. This is the way to read the 
book of nature, and after all there is no book like that. 
It never comes to an end, and there is a growing fascina- 
tion about it, so that when once you have got well into it, 
you can scarcely lay it down. 
I speak of reading the book. There are many who busy 
themselves with it and do not read it. There is your doctor 
of nomenclature, who devotes his laborious life to the 
elucidation of such questions as whether you shall call 
the common crow Corvus impudicus or Corvus splendens. 
He is an index-maker. Then there is a host of com* 
