Wet all day. Toothache.
a pair of field-glasses as well as my boots and stockings, I handed over the struggling bird to D⸺. While wading across, I suddenly sank to my waist in a sandpit. This frightened me, and I was glad to reach the other side in safety. But on arrival I found D⸺, but no Curlew. In wading across the current, he grew flurried and let it go. The tide swept it upstream, and the poor bird, I fear, perished by drowning. … Knocked up my friend P⸺, who is skipper of the ship N⸺ and asked him if he had a fire so that I could dry myself. He replied that they had no fire but that his “missus” would look out a pair of pants for me. Before falling in with this plan unconditionally, I thought it best to inspect the garment. However, it was quite clean—a pair of blue serge seaman’s trousers, very baggy in the seat and far too long. But I turned up the bottoms and hid the baggy part underneath my overcoat. So, I got back home!
Toothache.
Toothache.
Toothache.
Xmas Day
Mother and Dad wanted to give me one of G. A. Henty’s, but, fearing lest I did not want it, they did not put my name in it, so that if I wished I could change it. Intend doing this. Am reading the Origin of Species. It requires careful study, but I understand it so far and shall go on.
I have caught nothing in my traps yet. A little while ago I set a springe and two horsehair nooses in the reed bed for water rails. I have bought a book on practical trapping.
1905
I am thinking that on the whole I am a most discontented mortal. I get fits of what I call “What’s the good of anything” mania. I keep asking myself incessantly till the question wears me out: “What’s the good of going into the country naturalising? what’s the good of studying so hard? where is it going to end? will it lead anywhere?”
When I can get hold of anyone interested in Natural History I talk away in the most garrulous manner and afterwards feel ashamed of myself for doing it.
The Captain, in answer to my letter, advises me to join one of the ordinary professions and then follow up Nat. History as a recreation, or else join Science Classes at S. Kensington, or else by influence get a post in the Natural History Museum. But I shall see.
During dinner hour, between morning and afternoon school, went out on the S⸺ B⸺ River Bank, and found another Sedge Warbler’s nest. This is the fifth I have found this year. People who live opposite on the T⸺ V⸺ hear them sing at night and think they are Nightingales!
On reviewing the past egg-season, I find in all I have discovered 232 nests belonging to forty-four species. I only hope I shall be as successful with the beetle-season.
A hot, sultry afternoon, during most of which I was stretched out on the grass beside an upturned stone where a battle royal was fought between Yellow and Black Ants. The victory went to the hardy little Yellows. … By the way, I held a Newt by the tail today and it emitted a squeak! So that the Newt has a voice after all.
In bed with a feverish cold. I am afraid I have very few Nat. His. observations to make. It is hard to observe anything at all when lying in bed in a dull bedroom with one small window. Gulls and Starlings pass, steam engines whistle, horses’ feet clatter down the street, and sometimes the voice of a passerby reaches me, and often the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind. I can also hear my own cough echoing through my head, and, by the evening, the few pages of Lubbock’s Ants, Bees, and Wasps which I struggled to get through during the day rattle through my brain till I am disgusted to find I have them by heart. The clock strikes midnight and I wait for the morning. Oh! what a weary world.
Down with another cold. Feeling pretty useless. It’s a wonder I don’t develop melancholia.
By 7 a.m. H⸺ and I were down on the mudflats of the River with field-glasses, watching Waders. Ringed Plover in great numbers.
1906
I have always had one ambition to be a great naturalist. That is, I suppose, a child’s fancy, and I can see my folly in hoping for such great things. Still, there is no reason why I should not become a learned naturalist if I study hard. I hope that whatever I do I shall do in the hope of increasing knowledge of truth and not for my own fame. This entry may suggest that I am horribly conceited. But really I am as humble as possible. I know I have advanced beyond many others, and I know I shall advance further, but why be conceited? … What a short life we have, and what heaps of glorious work to be done! Supper bell—so I am off. … This reads like Isaac Walton’s funny mixtures of the sublime with the ridiculous. He discusses abstract happiness and the best salmon sauce all in one breath.
Although it is a grand achievement to have added but one jot or tittle to the sum of human knowledge it is grander still to have added a thought. It is best for a man to try to be both poet
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