He soon discovered, as all beginners must, that there is very much more to it than one might think; that here, too, one must pay for exact knowledge with painstaking care and patient study and ceaseless effort. He discovered how fatally easy it is to spoil a good specimen; how fairy-fragile a wee wing is; how painted scales rub, and vanish into thin air; how delicate antennæ break, and forelegs will fiendishly depart hence; and that proper mounting, which results in a perfect insect, is a task which requires practice, a sure eye, and an expert, delicate, and dexterous touch. Also, that one must be ceaselessly on guard lest the baleful little ant and other tiny curses evade one's vigilance and render void one's best work. He learned these and other salutary lessons, which tend to tone down an amateur's conceit of his half-knowledge; and this chastened him. He felt his pride at stake--he who could so expertly, with almost demoniac ingenuity, force the costliest and most cunningly constructed burglar-proof lock; he whose not idle boast was that he was handy with his fingers! Slippy McGee baffled, at bay before a butterfly? And in the presence of a mere priest and a girl-child? Never! He'd show us what he could do when he really tried to try! Presently he wanted to classify; and he wanted to do it alone and unaided--it looked easy enough. It irked him, pricked his pride, to have to be always asking somebody else "what is this?" And right then and there those inevitable difficulties that confront every earnest and conscientious seeker at the beginning of his quest, arose, as the fascinating living puzzles presented themselves for his solving. To classify correctly is not something one learns in a day, be he never so willing and eager; as one may discover who cares to take half a dozen plain, obscurely-colored small moths, and attempts to put them in their proper places. Mr. Flint tried it--and those wretched creatures _wouldn't_ stay put. It seemed to him that every time he looked at them they ought to be somewhere else; always there was something--a bar, a stripe, a small distinctive spot, a wing of peculiar shape, antennæ, or palpi, or spur, to differentiate them. "Where the Sam Hill," he blazed, "do all these footy little devils come from, anyhow? Where am I to put a beast of a bug when the next one that's exactly like it is entirely different the next time you look at it? There's too much beginning and no end at all to this game!" For all that, he followed them up. I saw with pure joy that he refused to dismiss anything carelessly, while he scorned to split hairs. He had a regular course of procedure when he was puzzled. First he turned the new insect over and over and glared at it from every possible angle; then he rumpled his hair, gritted his teeth, squared his shoulders and hurled himself into work.