XII.

NATURAL HISTORY.

BY F. W. HEADLEY.

IF the study of natural history is to be pursued with success at a public school, certain conditions, not too often found in combination, are essential. The school must be in real country, not in a dubious region on the outskirts of a big town, and the pursuit of it must be encouraged by those in authority. As far as possible the boys must be allowed freedom, for if call-overs and other restrictions are multiplied unreasonably, the young naturalist, entangled in a spider's web of regulations, may be unable to follow his bent. There must be among the masters some who take a real interest in natural history, and there must be a fairly good museum.

In all these points Haileybury is well off. First and foremost the school is in genuine country. Though it is only 19 miles from London, yet to the west and south-west lie great stretches of woodland interspersed with occasional meadows where hardly a cottage is to be seen, and where for miles you hardly meet a human being. Moreover, just outside the college gates there is a good deal of wild unenclosed land haunted by numberless song-birds. Towards the east, it is true, you descend, before you have walked far, into the valley of the Lea, up which London is too rapidly extending. Yet in the Lea Valley herons, and occasionally snipe and wild

duck, may be seen, and when you cross it and explore the land beyond you are again in genuine country.

In the near neighbourhood you have woods, river meadows with occasional reed-beds, and arable land. Here, then, a boy has a fair chance of developing the hunting instinct, on a modified form of which, adapted to the demands of civilised life, his efficiency in after years so largely depends. The man of original research, even when his hunting ground is bounded by the walls of his laboratory, is the lineal descendant (in mind and character) of men who roamed through forest and over moor and lived by the chase. In the boy the hunting instinct should be developed, and guided too. He does not readily limit himself to a laboratory or a museum, or even to organised excursions.

And in this connection it cannot be too much regretted that in many preparatory schools the tendency is to coop boys up more and more. During play hours there is always a master" on duty." The boys are always in leading-strings, not making occupation for themselves, but waiting for orders; not trying to find things or invent amusements, but immeshed in the trammels of a system. Excellent as very many of these schools are in other respects, a change is wanted here. To this system, enforced during the years when character is either developing on its natural lines or is being stunted for want of space and freedom, I trace very largely the fact that so many boys have very little bent of their

own.

Though out-of-door natural history is the great thing for a young zoologist, yet a museum is an important school institution. It helps to teach him the significance of the things he discovers for himself. Without a museum, and without instruction, he will not be able to make out where the small fragments

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of knowledge due to his own youthful researches find their places among the great discoveries of science. But if he learns only by means of instruction, his knowledge will have no solid basis. His own explorations and observations make his knowledge a live and genuine thing. What he picks up in a museum and by the help of his instructors widens it and gives it proportion. The Haileybury museum is, unfortunately, much smaller than it should be. But it contains hardly anything that is not instructive. Moreover, it is strong in marine types, so that boys are able to realise the fact that the sea is too rich in life, too rich in forms of life that have no near allies on land or in fresh water, to be neglected by any one who aspires to be called a zoologist. They get to know something of starfishes, hydroids, and ascidians, and this may induce them to use their opportunities when they are by the seaside.

It is not enough to know the outside appearance of an animal. Too many ornithologists limit their studies to the outside of the bird. The bird is a flying machine, and should be studied as such. He is also a musician, and this side of his life is too interesting to be neglected. Since a boy is naturally a hunter, and since birds'-nesting is a kind of hunting, he takes to it naturally, and often limits his ornithology to that. The songs of birds boys do not trouble themselves about-songs are intangible things which cannot be collected and shown as trophies--but occasionally it has been found possible to give a prize for proficiency in distinguishing the notes of the different species. For the study of birds' songs the country round Haileybury is first-rate. All the resident songsters are common, and most of the migrants, from the nightingale and the blackcap down to the chiff-chaff. The birds of prey, on the other hand, have been reduced by the gamekeepers to vanishing point, or almost to it. It is a rare

thing to see a magpie's-nest within a radius of three miles.

Mammals are few in number in Britain, and it is difficult to arouse much interest in them. Only very occasionally can a boy be found to collect voles, shrews, moles, &c., in spite of the fact that an Old Haileyburian offers a handsome prize for a reasonably good collection of skins. The want of interest in mammals is partly due to the fact that a boy likes to collect what others are collecting, so that he may compare notes with them.

It is most desirable that boys should keep notebooks or pocketbooks in which to record what they observe. It is very difficult to get this done unless it is encouraged by the publication of every observation, even the most trivial, with the observer's initials -e.g., that A.B.C. found a blackbird's-nest rather earlier than anyone else. This system may be good -some schools where it is regularly established turn out some really good naturalists-but as to this particular method I have always had doubts. Ought this plan of claiming priority, whether by publishing in the Zoologischer Anzeiger or the report of the school Natural History Society, to be necessary for naturalists who are supposed to be quiet investigators working at their own subject for the love of the thing? But there is plenty of encouragement given here to observers. We do not trust to unstimulated zeal. There are prizes offered for good work of any kind bearing on natural history, whether it is done in the term time or in the holidays. We have besides a Fauna and Flora of the neighbourhood, bound in a strong but flexible cover, so that it can conveniently be carried in a coat-pocket. It contains lists of our mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, rotifers, flowers, and it is inter-leaved so that new observations can be noted. It is sold to members of the Natural Science Society at less than half cost price. This

Fauna and Flora is of much more practical use than lists published in the annual reports, which are not bound suitably for carrying in the pocket. Some of our boy naturalists have contributed a great deal to it. Any new discovery is noted in a copy kept specially for the purpose, and is printed in the next edition.

Egg-collecting requires no encouragement.

But

a good deal is done to humanise collectors. All buying of eggs is forbidden, and a fair number of boys, when appealed to, join the society for the protection of birds. There are generally a good many moth collectors. In some public schools the boy who carries a butterfly-net loses caste so much that no one dare do it. But it has never been the case here. There are occasionally boys who study molluscs and make collections of shells. But this is rather an exceptional phenomenon. The neighbourhood is particularly rich in microscopic pond animals, such as rotifers and small crustaceans, but, as a rule, the study of these does not thrive here. Nor are botanists plentiful. Botany is not exciting. A flower does not run away and require catching. Still, there are a few keen botanists, forming a botanical section that has meetings at least in the summer term. The neighbourhood is very good for flowering plants.

Every third week there is a general meeting of the society and a lecture. These lectures deal not only with natural history, but with any scientific subject. The correct title of the society is the Natural Science Society, and it is well to give this a wide interpretation. Boys are not specialists, and a large percentage have not yet found out their own bent.

Every week there is a meeting in the museum of those who make a rather more serious study of zoology. They draw from the specimens and learn something of comparative morphology. I take