in fact, we lose an immense amount of
enjoyment by passing through life as so many do without a spark of
interest in the marvellous world of nature, that book whose pages are
ever lying open before us.

The beauties of the country might as well have been left uncreated for
all the interest that thousands take in them. Not only town dwellers,
who might be excused for their ignorance, but those who live in the
midst of fields and woods, often know so little about the curious
creatures in fur and feathers that exist around them that they are
surprised when told the simplest facts about these, their near
neighbours.

One reason may be, that it is now so much the fashion to spend the year
in various places, and those always moving about have neither the time
nor opportunity to cultivate the little undergrowths of quiet pleasures
which spring out of a settled home in the country, with its well-tended
garden and farmyard, greenhouses, stable, and fields--the horses and
cattle, petted and kindly cared for from their birth, dogs and poultry,
and all kinds of special favourites.

There is a healthy, happy tone about such a life, and where it exists
and is rightly maintained, good influence is, or ought to be, felt in
and around the home. Almost all children have a natural love of living
creatures, and if they are told interesting facts about them they soon
become ardent naturalists. I well remember that in my childhood I had a
great dread of toads and frogs, and a relative, to whom I owe much for
having directed my mind into the love of animated nature, took up a frog
in her hand and made me look at the beautiful gold circle round its
eyes, its curious webbed feet, its leaping power arising from the long
hind legs; she told me also of its wonderful tongue, so long and
flexible that it folded back in its mouth, and that the frog would sit
at the edge of an ant-hill and throwing out the tongue with its sticky
point, would pick off the ants one by one as they came out. When I
learnt all this, I began to watch such a curious reptile; my fears
vanished, and like Kingsley's little daughter, who had been wisely led
to care for all living things and came running to show her father a
"dear delightful worm" she had found! so I, too, have been led all
through my life to regard every created thing, great or small,
attractive or otherwise, as an object well worth the most reverent
study.

Perhaps I ought to explain that I have described