THE ROYAL ARTILLERY INSTITUTION. 
21 
nature is based; and he, if he will—as he may do without interfering 
with his sport—can study the habits of the animals among whom he spends 
wholesome and exciting days. You have only to look over such good 
old books as Williams* “Wild Sports of the East,” Campbell's “Old 
Forest Ranger,” Lloyd’s “ Scandinavian Adventures,” and last, but not 
least, Water ton's “Wanderings,” to see what valuable additions to true 
zoology—the knowledge of live creatures, not merely dead ones—British 
sportsmen have made, and still can make. And as for the employment 
of time, which often hangs so heavily on a soldier's hands, really I am 
ready to say, if you are neither men of science, or draughtsmen, or 
sportsmen, why go and collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know, 
nor exciting, but it will be something to do. It cannot harm you, if you 
take (as beetle hunters do) an india-rubber sheet to lie on; and it will 
certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will be a noble humility in 
the act. You will confess to the public’that you consider yourself only 
fit to catch beetles, by which very confession you will prove yourself fit 
for much finer things than catching beetles ; and meanwhile, as I said 
before, you will be at least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack 
once, the happiest officer I met, because the most regularly employed, 
was one who spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing 
about them scientifically—not even their names. He took them simply 
for their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too (in which 
he was really scientific), that if he carefully kept every form which 
he saw, his collection might be of use some day to entomologists at 
home. A most pleasant gentleman he was, and, I doubt not, none the 
worse soldier for his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my 
eyes, was another officer (whom I have not the pleasure of knowing), 
who, on a remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from the 
temptations of the world into an entirely original and most pleasant 
hermitage. For finding (the story went) that many of the finest insects 
kept to the tree tops, and never came to ground at all, he used to 
settle himself among the boughs of some tree in the tropic forests, 
with a long-handled net and plenty of cigars, and pass his hours in 
that airy flower garden, making dashes every now and then at some 
splendid monster as it fluttered round his head. His example need 
not be followed by everyone; but it must be allowed that—at least 
as long as he was in his tree—he was neither dawdling, grumbling, 
spending money, or otherwise harming himself, and perhaps his fellow 
creatures, from sheer want of employment. 
One word more and I have done. If I was allowed to give one special 
piece of advice to a young officer, whether of the army or navy, I 
would say :—Respect scientific men; associate with them; learn from 
them; find them to be, as you will usually, the most pleasant and 
instructive of companions : but always respect them. Allow them 
chivalrously, you who have an acknowledged rank, their yet unacknow¬ 
ledged rank, and. treat them as all the world will treat them, in a 
higher and truer state of civilisation. They do not yet wear the Queen's 
uniform; they are not yet accepted servants of the State, as they will be 
in some more perfectly organised and civilised land; but they are soldiers 
nevertheless, and good soldiers and chivalrous, fighting their nation's 
battle, often on even less pay than you, and with still less chance of 
