For The Pursuit Brought One Into
Relations Not Only With Interesting Birds And Beasts, But With Men.
There was Mr. H. of the Linnean Society, whose waxed moustache curled
round upon itself like an ammonite. A great writer of books was Mr. H.,
and a great collector of them. He collected, among other things, a rare
monograph belonging to me and dealing with the former distribution of
the beaver in Bavaria (we were both absorbed in beavers). Nothing I
could do or say would induce him to disgorge it again; he had always
lent it to a friend, who was just on the point of returning it, etc.
etc. Bitterly grieved, I not only forgave him, but put him into
communication with my friend Dr. Girtanner of St. Gallen, another
beaver - and marmot - specialist. It stimulated his love of Swiss zoology
to such an extent that he straightway borrowed a still rarer pamphlet of
mine, J. J. Tschudi's "Schweizer Echsen," which I likewise never saw
again. What an innocent one was! Where is now the man who will induce me
to lend him such books?
In those days I held a student's ticket at the South Kensington Museum,
an institution I enriched with specimens of rana graeca from near Lake
Stymphalus, and lizards from the Filfla rock, and toads from a volcanic
islet (toads, says Darwin, are not found on volcanic islets), and slugs
from places as far apart as Santorin and the Shetlands and Orkneys,
whither I went in search of Asterolepis and the Great Skua. The last
gift was a seal from the fresh-water lake of Saima in Finland. Who ever
heard of seals living in sweet land-locked waters? This was one of my
happiest discoveries, though the delight of my friend the Curator was
tempered by the fact that this particular specimen happened to be an
immature one, and did not display any pronounced race-characters. I have
early recollections of the rugged face and lovely Scotch accent of Tam
Edwards, the Banffshire naturalist; and much later ones of J. Young,
[24] who gave me a circumstantial account of how he found the first snow
bunting's nest in Sutherlandshire; I recall the Rev. Mathew (? Mathews)
of Gumley, an ardent Leicestershire ornithologist, whose friendship I
gained at a tender age on discovering the nest of a red-legged
partridge, from which I took every one of the thirteen eggs. "Surely six
would have been enough," he said - a remark which struck me as rather
unreasonable, seeing that French partridges were not exactly as common
as linnets. He afterwards showed me his collection of birdskins,
dwelling lovingly, for reasons which I cannot remember, upon that of a
pin-tail duck.
He it was who told me that no collector was worth his salt until he had
learnt to skin his own birds. Fired with enthusiasm, I took lessons in
taxidermy at the earliest possible opportunity - from a grimy old
naturalist in one of the grimiest streets of Manchester, a man who
relieved birds of their jackets in dainty fashion with one hand, the
other having been amputated and replaced by an iron hook.
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