THE DRAMA OF LIFE 
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life as it is lived in Nature. Amid the undoubted 
and surely legitimate fascinations of dissection and 
osteology, of section-cutting and histology, of 
physiological chemistry and physiological physics, 
of embryology and fossil-hunting, and the like, 
do we not need to be reminded sometimes of 
what MacGillivray felt so strongly, that the 
chief end of our study is a better understanding 
of living creatures in their natural surroundings ? 
In what we may perhaps call the keenly analytic 
atmosphere of modern zoology, there is no risk 
that any one will fail to appreciate the value of 
the abstractions which we make when we study 
the dead beast on the dissecting tray, or sections 
of parts of it under the microscope, or solutions 
of parts of it in the test-tube—but is there not a 
risk lest we forget that the picture and the 
problem with which the naturalist starts, and 
to which he must eventually return, is the picture 
and the problem of the shore-pool, the wayside 
pond, the open sea, the moorland tarn, the bird- 
berg—in short, wild Nature and its drama of life ? 
To give a single instance of MacGillivray’s vivid 
and careful pourtrayal of an episode in the 
business of life, we may quote his description of 
the pursuit of a lark by a hawk:— 
“When about a mile beyond the Loch of 
Achlossan, I had my attention attracted by the 
cries of a lark, which I saw pursued by a hawk. 
It strove incessantly to keep above its enemy, which 
equally endeavoured to gain the ascendency, and 
