United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is for the advent of such Naturalist-Artist that we wait. But we have to prepare the way for him and do our share in helping to produce him. And this will now be my endeavour, for it so happens that I have been blessed with opportunities some of my own making, some provided for me of seeing Nature on a larger scale and under more varied aspects than falls to the lot of most men.
We want, in fact, a Naturalist-Artist a combination of Julian Grenfell and Darwin. And this is no outrageously impossible, but a very likely and fitting combination. For Julian Grenfell wrote great poetry even in the trenches in Flanders between the two battles of Ypres.
Amongst these may be our Naturalist-Artist who year after year, drawn to Sikkim and Kashmir by his love of Natural Beauty, would learn to know Nature in the wonderfully varied aspects under which she is to be seen in those favoured regions, who would come into ever-deepening communion with her, would yearly see more Beauty in her, and would communicate to us the enjoyment he had felt.
But we may be sure that our Naturalist-Artist, when he gathers together in his mind the impressions which have been made upon him by his passage through the tropical forests to the alpine uplands and thence to the limit of perpetual snow, will find that his sense of the variety of beauty to be found in trees and leaves, in ferns and flowers, has immeasurably expanded.
And with his love of country life, shooting, fishing, and hunting, his inclination might very easily have been directed towards natural history. If it had been and the opportunity had offered, we might have had the very type of Naturalist-Artist we are now awaiting.
But the Naturalist-Artist of the future will probably not be content with the conclusion to which so many jump that all that Nature teaches or expects of individuals plants, beasts, or men is that they should adapt themselves to their surroundings and fit themselves to survive; that all Nature has at heart is adaptability of individuals to their surroundings and their fitness to survive.
Word Of The Day