forest. I have seen the cultivated man, craving for travel and for
success in life, pent up in the drudgery of London work, and yet
keeping his spirit calm, and perhaps his morals all the more
righteous, by spending over his microscope evenings which would too
probably have gradually been wasted at the theatre. I have seen
the young London beauty, amid all the excitement and temptation of
luxury and flattery, with her heart pure and her mind occupied in a
boudoir full of shells and fossils, flowers and sea-weeds; keeping
herself unspotted from the world, by considering the lilies of the
field, how they grow. And therefore it is that I hail with
thankfulness every fresh book of Natural History, as a fresh boon
to the young, a fresh help to those who have to educate them.

The greatest difficulty in the way of beginners is (as in most
things) how "to learn the art of learning." They go out, search,
find less than they expected, and give the subject up in
disappointment. It is good to begin, therefore, if possible, by
playing the part of "jackal" to some practised naturalist, who will
show the tyro where to look, what to look for, and, moreover, what
it is that he has found; often no easy matter to discover. Forty
years ago, during an autumn's work of dead-leaf-searching in the
Devon woods for poor old Dr. Turton, while he was writing his book
on British land-shells, the present writer learnt more of the art
of observing than he would have learnt in three years' desultory
hunting on his own account; and he has often regretted that no
naturalist has established shore-lectures at some watering-place,
like those up hill and down dale field-lectures which, in pleasant
bygone Cambridge days, Professor Sedgwick used to give to young
geologists, and Professor Henslow to young botanists.