crusted old Tories to be told that they have no exclusive claim to gifts of mind and of personality; their cry of outrage taking the form of loud denials of assertions tending to reverse their convictions, and of sweeping all their opponents into the scorned category of nature-fakirs. It should not be a surprise to find amid this forlorn hope of the human egotists some who claim the title of naturalists. A naturalist in the past has been one who, armed with lethal weapons, went forth in search of his fellow creatures' lives, and who found his pleasure in the measurements and studies of the dead bodies of his victims. To know the exact number of a dead warbler's tail-feathers, to give accurately the measure of a bob-cat's skull, was sufficient in the past to rank one as a naturelover. One might as properly call a student of human anatomy a philanthropist. To accept the views of the man who seeks animals only with a gun in his hand, would seem about as intelligent as to pin one's faith to the opinion of a Japanese soldier upon the home life of the Russian moujik. The moujik pitting his cunning and the swiftness of his legs against the searching fire of the machine-gun is a very different person from the Russian peasant making love, marrying, rearing his children in the security of his village mir. To the hunter all animals seem wild beasts, cunning, treacherous, fierce, and stupid,

and hunters of men would probably bring us back a like report of the human race. If one could imagine that remarkable story by H. G. Wells, "The War of the Worlds," having been an actual occurrence, one could imagine what sort of a report the Martians must have taken back to Mars of the treachery, fierceness, and lack of reasoning faculty displayed by the inhabitants of London when pursued by weapons so deadly and so unusual as those employed in the interplanetary struggle.

Apart from this limitation of the point of view, those who denounce students of the wild as naturefakirs make no allowance for the difference between individuals in the animal world. Of course these deny that such differences exist, but the same type of mind would not admit possible differences in the characters of Frenchmen, Negroes, and Chinamen. Such a mind lumps the whole race into a mere undifferentiated mass of "dagoes," "coons," and "chinks"; and the possibility of the individual displaying any variation from the preconceived type of chink, coon, or dago would be scornfully repudiated as the mendacious romancing of human naturefakirs. A mind of this calibre asserts that wolves do thus and so wolves never do thus and so. One might as well say Joneses do thus and so — -Joneses never do thus and so; when nothing is more certain

than that children born of the same parents, bred in the same environment, differ as widely as human beings can. One Jones may be a scientist, another a mystic. A Jones may be an eminent financier, his twin brother a ne'er-do-weel and a wastrel. Meeting the banker Jones, one might as properly say that all Joneses have the money sense; or the next student of Joneses declare, studying the brother, that all Joneses are idle spendthrifts; and each observer would probably call the other an unintelligent liar. Now wolves differ as greatly as do Joneses, and much depends on which wolf one has

met.

How, after all, are we to pass these sweeping judgements upon our fellow animals when we understand so little our fellow men? For we speak in the same broad way of nations of human beings. The French are polite, the Italians romantic, the English haughty and inhospitable. Even so close at home as between North and South, East and West, there are the same rough judgements. The North thinks the South lazy, shiftless, and ignorant; and a Northerner listens with incredulity to denials, or even proofs, of the contrary. The South is firmly convinced that the special characteristics of the North are grinding, greedy meannesses, and coldblooded hypocrisies. The East thinks the West

coarse, sensual, and violent; the West returns the compliment by charges of cowardly effeteness.

Here we are in a common country, under one government, speaking one language, with one literature, laced together in the closest communion by common interests, and yet we so little understand and sympathize with our human neighbours. I have heard a New York woman, of rather unusual education and breeding, express naïve and profound surprise at finding the house of a Western millionaire exquisitely and artistically appointed; and the average Westerner is amazed to find that an Eastern man can sit a horse or fire a gun. Even travel cannot open eyes closed by prejudice. Indeed, it probably only intensifies the misinterpretation, for the eyes cannot see what the brain is not prepared to receive. One who has a fixed preconception will notice only such matters as fit the preconception.

A geologist, a naturalist, and a sailor went for a ride by a wooded road that overlooked the sea. They discussed a political question all the way, but on their return their hostess conceived the idea of making them each write for her a brief account of the expedition. The geologist had been most interested in a curious formation of the soil shown in a deep cutting made to grade the road. The sailor had observed several unusual types of boats; and

both of these stared rather doubtingly at the naturalist when he reported the presence of six scarlet tanagers within a few acres of forest. No one of the three had seen what the others had seen, and yet all were trained observers. Each had found what the bent of his mind had led him to look for, and entirely missed important facts that were outside the scope of his interest,- for, as I said before, it is impossible to see what one has not the type of brain to receive. And apparently there is nothing so tempting as to affirm that what one has not seen cannot possibly exist.

It is not necessary, however, to linger to point out the limitations of these vociferous apostles of negation. We may pass onward to those who have given us a definite and tangible impulse toward a larger comprehension of the world in which we live; those who have touched our blinded eyes and said, "Ephatha!"'-be thou opened,—and led us by the hand back to "Nature, the dear old nurse," and introduced us to our myriad playfellows who stand ready to teach us a thousand lessons, to show us endless treasures.

Perhaps the most famous of these apostles to the Gentiles is Ernest Seton, that Shakespeare of the woods, with his gift of characterization, of gathering up the qualities of a species into an archetype, so