INSULARITY. 
219 
visit ns only in the winter—let me instance the fieldfare, 
redwing, brambling, and sliort-eared owl (as we are inland 
folk mostly)—which take up their quarters with us during a 
few months in the year, and regularly every year. What do 
we know of them on the whole ? We can recognise the bird 
when we see it, perhaps ; its note, perhaps ; we know what 
it feeds on, perhaps — while it is with us; what more? 
Perhaps we religiously buy its eggs, or what pass for its eggs— 
we cannot be sure—because it is classed as a British bird ; we 
have a specimen or two mummified in a glass case, with a 
number of incongruous vegetables and insects. But what do 
we know of it on the whole ? Truly, very little. So with 
the birds which visit us in the summer, after these others 
have taken their departure, which visit us for reasons, 
perhaps, which they could hardly explain if they could speak, 
but would be driven to take refuge in an answer which many 
men are apt to bring up as a triumphant reserve (though, to 
my mind, a very irrational, and often unsatisfactory one) 
when they are required to give a reason for half the things 
they do—“ My father, my grandfather, and my great grand¬ 
father used to do so, and that is enough for me.” We know 
the summer birds’ notes and appearance, perhaps; we 
examine their nests, and know what sort of places to expect 
them in ; we even know their range in Britain, perhaps, As 
to where they go when they leave us, what is their range in 
Europe and in the world generally, whether their habits are 
different in other lands, the species closely allied to them, 
and their differences in appearance and habits and range 
from these—to all these things, which go to make up what 
strictly deserves the name of scientific knowledge—to such 
matters we are, too often, profoundly indifferent. And again 
I am constrained to remark, pity it is so. 
We should, undoubtedly, have a far higher claim to the 
possession of true scientific knowledge if we were to confine 
our attention to one moderate-sized genus of mammalia, 
birds, insects, mollusca, or plants, and worked out the dis¬ 
tribution of that genus in the world—zoologically (or, in the 
case of plants, botanically) and paleontologically — and 
familiarised ourselves with every member of that genus, its 
area, economy, habits, and uses, than by ever so general a 
study of the whole class as exemplified only in Great Britain. 
And that leads me to express my wonder why we do not 
pursue our studies abroad more. All professional and com¬ 
mercial men nowadays have, more or less, their holidays, if 
nothing more than a few days at Easter, Whitsuntide, and 
Christmas. In these days of cheap and rapid travelling, why 
