others, he can destroy, but how little he can build up; he can take hold of the daddy-legs leg by leg and find that they all come off, and wonder perhaps at the zest with which that eager little martyr fulfils the words of Scripture, "If thy foot offend thee cut it off and cast it from thee." But constant repetition of the experiment, though it may give him an evil sense of power, will give him no variety, no real advance in knowledge concerning the life, or the use and beauty of flies' legs. He will not treasure—to benefit by them—the legs that he has pulled off, nor will his brain have stored anything but an added sense of and liking for his own power to destroy. And so will it be with everything on which he experiments destructively. His knowledge and understanding of their nature will remain at a minimum. Progressing on these lines, he will for ever be making things cease to be themselves without making them really his own. But if he reverse that process of experiment by encouraging things to be themselves, how varied and multitudinous will grow his consciousness of life, his appreciation of its finer shades, its delicacy, its grace, its adaptability, its vigour and its freedom. If his interest is in birds, how much more he will know of them, and find in them how much more of alertness and beauty, if he hang food for them outside his window, rather than cages for them within; if he will recognise that the beauty of a bird lies too largely in its wings, for caging to be
