mean the sportsman of that type which seems
peculiar to these islands, who loves toil and danger for their own sakes;
he surely is a naturalist, ipso facto, though he knows it not. He has
those very habits of keen observation on which all sound knowledge of
nature is based; and he, if he will--as he may do without interfering
with his sport--can study the habits of the animals among whom he spends
wholesome and exciting days. You have only to look over such good old
books as Williams's 'Wild Sports of the East,' Campbell's 'Old Forest
Ranger,' Lloyd's 'Scandinavian Adventures,' and last, but not least,
Waterton's 'Wanderings,' to see what valuable additions to true
zoology--the knowledge of live creatures, not merely dead ones--British
sportsmen have made, and still can make. And as for the employment of
time, which often hangs so heavily on a soldier's hands, really I am
ready to say, if you are neither men of science, nor draughtsmen, nor
sportsmen, why go and collect beetles. It is not very dignified, I know,
nor exciting: but it will be something to do. It cannot harm you, if you
take, as beetle-hunters do, an india-rubber sheet to lie on; and it will
certainly benefit science. Moreover, there will be a noble humility in
the act. You will confess to the public that you consider yourself only
fit to catch beetles; by which very confession you will prove yourself
fit for much finer things than catching beetles: and meanwhile, as I said
before, you will be at least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack
once, the happiest officer I met, because the most regularly employed,
was one who spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing
about them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for
their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too--in which he was
really scientific--that if he carefully kept every form which he saw, his
collection might be of use some day to entomologists at home. A most
pleasant gentleman he was; and, I doubt not, none the worse soldier for
his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my eyes, was another
officer--whom I have not the pleasure of knowing--who, on a remote
foreign station, used wisely to escape from the temptations of the world
into an entirely original and most pleasant hermitage. For finding--so
the story went--that many of the finest insects kept to the tree-tops,
and never came to ground at all, he used to settle himself among the