I told him the whole story. “I shall go back for the others,” I said, “when the young birds have got their quill-feathers.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t do that!” cried the priest.
“You mustn’t be so cruel as to rob the poor mother of all her little birds. Be a good boy, now, and promise not to touch the nest.” [[4]]
From this conversation I learnt two things: first, that robbing birds’ nests is cruel and, secondly, that birds and beasts have names just like ourselves.
“What are the names of all my friends in the woods and meadows?” I asked myself. “And what does Saxicola mean?” Years later I learnt that Saxicola means an inhabitant of the rocks. My bird with the blue eggs was a Stone-chat.
Below our village there ran a little brook, and beyond the brook was a spinney of beeches with smooth, straight trunks, like pillars. The ground was padded with moss. It was in this spinney that I picked my first mushroom, which looked, when I caught sight of it, like an egg dropped on the moss by some wandering hen. There were many others there, of different sizes, forms, and colours. Some were shaped like bells, some like extinguishers, some like cups: some were broken, and were weeping tears of milk: some became blue when I trod on them. Others, the most curious of all, were like pears with a round hole at the top—a sort of chimney whence a whiff of smoke escaped when I prodded their under-side with my finger. I filled my pockets with these, and made them smoke at my leisure, till at last they were reduced to a kind of tinder.
Many a time I returned to that delightful spinney, [[5]]and learnt my first lessons in mushroom-lore in the company of the Crows. My collections, I need hardly say, were not admitted to the house.
In this way—by observing Nature and making experiments—nearly all my lessons have been learnt: all except two, in fact. I have received from others two lessons of a scientific character, and two only, in the whole course of my life: one in anatomy and one in chemistry.
I owe the first to the learned naturalist Moquin-Tandon, who showed me how to explore the interior of a Snail in a plate filled with water. The lesson was short and fruitful.[1]
My first introduction to chemistry was less fortunate. It ended in the bursting of a glass vessel, with the result that most of my fellow-pupils were hurt, one of them nearly lost his sight, the lecturer’s clothes were burnt to pieces, and the wall of the lecture-room was splashed with stains. Later on, when I returned to that room, no longer as a pupil but as a master, the splashes were still there. On that occasion I learnt one thing at least. Ever after, when I made experiments of that kind, I kept my pupils at a distance.