Glaucus; Or, The Wonders of the Shore

It might have made him a more learned systematizer; but would it have quickened in him that “seeing” eye of the true soldier and sportsman, which makes Montagu’s descriptions indelible word-pictures, instinct with life and truth? “There is no question,” says E. Forbes, after bewailing the vagueness of most naturalists, “about the identity of any animal Montagu described. . . . He was a forward-looking philosopher; he spoke of every creature as if one exceeding like it, yet different from it, would be washed up by the waves next tide. Consequently his descriptions are permanent.” Scientific men will recognize in this the highest praise which can be bestowed, because it attributes to him the highest faculty— The Art of Seeing; but the study and the book would not have given that. It is God’s gift wheresoever educated: but its true school-room is the camp and the ocean, the prairie and the forest; active, self-helping life, which can grapple with Nature herself: not merely with printed-books about her. Let no one think that this same Natural History is a pursuit fitted only for effeminate or pedantic men. I should say, rather, that the qualifications required for a perfect naturalist are as many and as lofty as were required, by old chivalrous writers, for the perfect knight-errant of the Middle Ages: for (to sketch an ideal, of which I am happy to say our race now affords many a fair realization) our perfect naturalist should be strong in body; able to haul a dredge, climb a rock, turn a boulder, walk all day, uncertain where he shall eat or rest; ready to face sun and rain, wind and frost, and to eat or drink thankfully anything, however coarse or meagre; he should know how to swim for his life, to pull an oar, sail a boat, and ride the first horse which comes to hand; and, finally, he should be a thoroughly good shot, and a skilful fisherman; and, if he go far abroad, be able on occasion to fight for his life.