Note 5 — Chapter XVIII · THE COLLABORATORS: (CONTINUED)

For him the feathered race means just the bird, and the reptile family the snake, without other differences than those of magnitude. Ignorant of everything, he generalises to the utmost, simplifying in his inability to see the complex. Later on he will learn that the Sparrow is not the Bullfinch, that the Linnet is not the Greenfinch; he will particularise, and he will do so more and more daily as his faculty of observation is more widely exercised. At first he saw nothing but resemblances, now he sees differences, but not yet so clearly as to avoid incongruous comparisons and zoological solecisms like those which my gardener utters.5