"Strange things pass nightly in this little room,
All dreary as it looks by light of day;
Enchantment reigns here when at evening play
Red fire-light glimpses through the pallid gloom."
And the true student, in Ruskin's words, stands on an eminence from which he looks back on the universe of God and forward over the generations of men.
Even if it be true that science was dry when it was buried in huge folios, that is certainly no longer the case now; and Lord Chesterfield's wise wish, that Minerva might have three graces as well as Venus, has been amply fulfilled.
The study of natural history indeed seems destined to replace the loss of what is, not very happily I think, termed "sport;" engraven in us as it is by the operation of thousands of years, during which man lived greatly on the produce of the chase. Game is gradually becoming "small by degrees and beautifully less." Our prehistoric ancestors hunted the mammoth, the woolly-haired rhinoceros, and Irish elk; the ancient Britons had the wild ox, the deer, and the wolf. We have still the pheasant, the partridge, the fox, and the hare; but even these are becoming scarcer, and must be preserved first, in order that they may be killed afterwards. Some of us even now—and more, no doubt, will hereafter—satisfy instincts, essentially of the same origin, by the study of birds, or insects, or even infusoria—of creatures which more than make up by their variety what they want in size.
Emerson avers that when a naturalist has "got all snakes and lizards in his phials, science has done for him also, and has put the man into a bottle." I do not deny that there are such cases, but they are quite exceptional. The true naturalist is no mere dry collector.
I cannot resist, although it is rather long, quoting the following description from Hudson and Gosse's beautiful work on the Rotifera:—
"On the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and not far from Clifton, is a little combe, at the bottom of which lies an old fish-pond. Its slopes are covered with plantations of beech and fir, so as to shelter the pond on three sides, and yet leave it open to the soft south-western breezes, and to the afternoon sun. At the head of the combe wells up a clear spring, which sends a thread of water, trickling through a bed of osiers, into the upper end of the pond. A stout stone wall has been drawn across the combe from side to side, so as to dam up the stream; and there is a gap in one corner through which the overflow finds its way in a miniature cascade, down into the lower plantation.
"If we approach the pond by the gamekeeper's path from the cottage above, we shall pass through the plantation, and come unseen right on the corner of the wall; so that one quiet step will enable us to see at a glance its whole surface, without disturbing any living thing that may be there.
"Far off at the upper end a water-hen is leading her little brood among the willows; on the fallen trunk of an old beech, lying half way across the pond, a vole is sitting erect, rubbing his right ear, and the splash of a beech husk just at our feet tells of a squirrel who is dining somewhere in the leafy crown above us.
"But see, the water-rat has spied us out, and is making straight for his hole in the bank, while the ripple above him is the only thing that tells of his silent flight. The water-hen has long ago got under cover, and the squirrel drops no more husks. It is a true Silent Pond, and without a sign of life.