Excerpt from Rambles and Reveries of a Naturalist His little volume of Natural History sketches has very little to do with opinions or speculations. The aim of the writer has been to describe the facts and phenomena of Nature as they have appeared to present themselves to his own observation. They are life-pictures rather than compilations. So far as systematic arrangement is concerned, there has certainly been an effort to treat each subject taken up in such a way as to lay at least a stepping-stone on the path to a more serious contemplation of the sciences of the text-book and the laboratory, but the primary intention of the author has been rather to awaken or to stimulate a love for Nature in the minds of some who may not as yet have suspected what wondrous and ever-varying beauty lies everywhere about us in ditch and pond, in rock and stone, in river and sea, on earth and in the skies. The same objects have been described by other and abler pens, but facts and laws present them selves in different aspects to different minds, and the ceaseless and diversified operations of Nature cannot be too frequently portrayed. Even those who would not care to claim the character of students of Nature are not unwilling to be considered lovers of Nature, and for such the plain and non-technical descriptions of a few of her secrets, by those who tell the story of what they themselves have seen and felt in her presence, cannot fail to possess some degree of interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.