All Men are Interested in Science––At a former meeting of the British Association, the President lamented that the progress of science was greatly hindered by the fact that we no longer have field naturalists––close observers of Nature as she is. A literary journal made a lamentable remark there-upon. It is all written in books, said this journal, so we have no longer any need to go to Nature herself. Now the knowledge of Nature which we get out of books is not real knowledge; the use of books is, to help the young student to verify facts he has already seen for himself. Let us, before all things, be Nature-lovers; intimate acquaintance with every natural object within his reach is the first, and, possibly, the best part of a child’s education. For himself, all his life long, he will be soothed by––
’The breathing balm,
The silence and the calm,
Of mute, insensate things.’