Front matter

BY

W. H. HUDSON

Author of ‘The Naturalist in LaPlata’

SECOND EDITION

HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED LONDON

PREFACE

It is necessary that a book should have a title, and important that this should be descriptive of the book: accordingly, I was pleased with my good fortune and myself when I hit upon one which was not merely descriptive but was attractive as well.

This was a long time ago when these studies, essays and sketches of animal life began to accumulate on my hands and I foresaw the book. Unhappily, long before my book was ready my nice title had occurred to some one else and was duly given by Sir E. Ray Lankester to his Diversions of a Naturalist—a collection of papers on a vast variety of subjects which had been appearing serially under another title. I was very much annoyed, not only because he is a big man and I am a little one and my need was therefore greater, but also because it appeared to me better suited to my book than to his. He deals with the deep problems of biology and is not exactly a naturalist in the old original sense of the word—one who is mainly concerned with the “life and conversation of animals,” and whose work is consequently more like play than his can be, even when it is Science from an Easy Chair.

What then was I to do, seeing that all possible changes had been rung on such general titles as Journals, Letters, Notes, Gleanings, and what not, of a Naturalist? There was no second string to my bow since Recreations had already been used by my friend J. E. Harting for his book. In sheer desperation I took this title, which would fit any work on Natural History ever published. Doubtless it would have been an improvement if I could have put in the “Field” before “Naturalist” to show that it was not a compilation, but the title could not be made longer even by a word.

Some of the chapters in this volume now appear for the first time; more of them, however, are taken from or based on articles which have appeared in various periodicals: the Fortnightly Review, National Review, Country Life, Nation, the New Statesman, and others. I am obliged to the Editors of the Times and Chambers’s Journal for permission to use two short copyright articles on the Rat and Squirrel which appeared in those journals.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

1. Life in a Pine Wood 1

2. Hints to Adder-Seekers 15

3. Bats 33

4. Beauty of the Fox 50

5. A Sentimentalist on Foxes 55

6. The Discontented Squirrel 63

7. My Neighbour’s Bird Stories 74

8. The Toad as Traveller 84

9. The Heron: A Feathered Notable 93

10. The Heron as a Table-Bird 106

11. The Mole Question 113

12. Cristiano: A Horse 119

13. Mary’s Little Lamb 123

14. The Serpent’s Tongue 134

15. The Serpent’s Strangeness 153

16. The Bruised Serpent 172

17. The Serpent in Literature 186

18. Wasps 210

19. Beautiful Hawk-Moths 217

20. The Strenuous Mole 225

21. A Friendly Rat 232

22. The Little Red Dog 238

23. Dogs in London 247

24. The Great Dog-Superstition 265

25. My Friend the Pig 295

26. The Potato at Home and in England 303

27. John-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon 316

28. The Chequered Daffodil 326

29. Concerning Lawns and Earthworms 337

Index 357

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