A Walk from London to John O'Groat's: With Notes by the WayBurritt, Elihu
History
A Walk from London to John O'Groat's: With Notes by the Way
Burritt, Elihu
Agriculture -- Great Britain; England -- Description and travel
Seriously, it may be urged that the refined tastes, arts, and genius
of the present day do not develop themselves symmetrically or
simultaneously in this matter. Here are connoisseurs and
enthusiasts in vegetable nature hunting up and down all the earth's
continents for rare trees, plants, shrubs, and flowers. They are
bringing them to England and America in shiploads, to such extent
and variety, that nearly all the dead languages and many of the
living are ransacked to furnish names for them. Llamas,
dromedaries, Cashmere goats, and other strange animals, are brought,
thousands of miles by sea and land, to be acclimatised and
domesticated to these northern countries. Artificial lakes are made
for the cultivation of fish caught in Antipodean streams. That is
all pleasant and hopeful and proper. The more of that sort of thing
the better. But why not do the other thing, too? Vattemare made it
the mission of his life to induce people of different countries to
exchange books, or unneeded duplicates of literature. We need an
Audubon or Wilson, not to make new collections of feathered
skeletons, and new volumes on ornithology, but to effect an exchange
of living birds between Europe and America; not for caging, not for
Zoological gardens and museums, but for singing their free songs in
our fields and forests. There is no doubt that the English lark
would thrive and sing as well in America as in this country. And
our bobolink would be as easily acclimatised in Europe. Who could
estimate the pleasure which such an exchange in the bird-world would
give to millions on both sides of the Atlantic?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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