128 A SCIENTIFIC APPRECIATION [ch. yi. 
that he cared much about the business of living 
creatures , their habits and instincts, their ways and 
means, their struggle for existence, their endeavour 
after well-being; but we mean something more— 
that he had the hardly-to-be-defined quality of 
almost affectionate regard for things in themselves, 
(not apparently, but perhaps really in the Ding-an- 
sich sense), that he enjoyed a fine stone, that he 
handled his shells tenderly, that he had an acquaint¬ 
ance with many birds as personalities—that he 
had, what Meredith calls “a love—exceeding a 
simple love—of things that move in rushes and 
rubble of woody wreck.” 
One of the marks of a naturalist of this species 
—to which Huxley, with all his magnificent genius, 
confessed that he did not belong—is a delight in 
details, which so often reveal the personal equation 
of the organism. To detect this, and the part it 
plays in the plot, is no small part of the perennial 
charm of natural history. 
It was this mood that led MacGillivray to notice 
that the squirrel peeled its beech-nuts after 
unshelling them; to time the duration of the lark’s 
song in varying conditions; to count the 2379 
feathers in the nest of the long-tailed tit; to watch 
the water-shrew sporting on the surface of the 
water, rapidly shooting along in curves, yet 
scarcely causing a ripple; to chronicle every move¬ 
ment of the long-eared bat as it prepares to go to 
sleep ; to measure the great ant-hills, seven feet by 
five, in the pine woods at Invercauld; to sort out 
