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The three-barrelled gun, combining a double shotgun and a rifle, is an excellent weapon, and it is particularly valuable for the collector of natural-history specimens. A new gun has just come on the market which may prove valuable in South America where there is such a variety of game, a four-barrel gun, weighing only eight and one fourth pounds.
This was catching me on my archaeological natural-history side, and I fell into the trap without any thought of where and when I was; so I began on it, while one of the girls, the handsome one, who had been scattering little twigs of lavender and other sweet-smelling herbs about the floor, came near to listen, and stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder, in which she held some of the plant that I used to call balm: its strong sweet smell brought back to my mind my very early days in the kitchen-garden at Woodford, and the large blue plums which grew on the wall beyond the sweet-herb patch, a connection of memories which all boys will see at once.
They were told simply, briefly, as a part of the day's work, by men who no longer thought of their adventures as being either very remarkable or very interesting. What, I thought, will seem interesting or remarkable to them after the war, after such a life as this? Once an American gave me a hint: "I'm going to apply for a job as attendant in a natural-history museum."
These rides and strolls into the woods were very fruitful in natural-history acquisitions and observations. I shall give an account of some of those made in the immediate vicinity of Santo Domingo, and I wish I could transfer to my readers some of the pleasure that they afforded me.
Meantime, a British commission was, in 1891-1892, ordered to prepare the natural-history material for the British case before the tribunal; and it would be difficult to find a more misleading piece of work than their report. Sham scientific facts were supplied for the purposes of the British counsel at Paris.
While my chief object was to see the Caribou, and prove their continued abundance, I was prepared incidentally to gather natural-history material of all kinds, and to complete the shore line of the ambiguous lake called "Aylmer," as well as explore its sister, the better-known Clinton-Colden.
On returning to England, Wallace took six years in preparation of his book, "The Malay Archipelago," a most stupendous literary undertaking, which covers the subjects of botany, geology, ornithology, entomology, zoology and anthropology, in a way that serves as a regular mine of information and suggestion for natural-history workers.
"It was a curious instance of the domestic goose reverting to its wild habit of nocturnal feeding," remarked my narrator, dwelling characteristically upon the natural-history aspect of the fact. Percival was almost incapable of an irrelevancy.
This instinct for the truth being so strong in him, he knows it when he sees it in others; he detects its absence, too; and has no patience and scant mercy for those past-masters in the art of blinking facts, those natural-history romancers who, realizing that "the crowd must have emphatic warrant," are not content with the infinite Variety of nature, but must needs spend their art in the wasteful and ridiculous excess of painting the lily, perfuming the violet, and giving to the rainbow an added hue.
But I advocate natural-history knowledge from this point of view, because it would lead us to seek the beauties of natural objects, instead of trusting to chance to force them on our attention. To a person uninstructed in natural history, his country or sea-side stroll is a walk through a gallery filled with wonderful works of art, nine-tenths of which have their faces turned to the wall.
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