And isn't it curious, when one comes to think of it, why a man should take pleasure in seeing a beautiful deer fall dead with a bullet in its heart? You'd think there would be so much more pleasure in seeing him run--the very poetry of motion. Or, why should a boy want to kill a little bird? You'd think it would have been so much greater pleasure to study its flight or to listen to the happy notes pour out from that "little breast that will throb with song no more." WHY MAN KILLS AND CALLS IT "SPORT" Among other animals that this banker naturalist studied was man himself; man when he was even more of an animal than he is to-day, and he came to the conclusion that this curious killing instinct is a survival of the long ages when man had to earn his living by the chase. "Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave When the night fell o'er the plain And the moon hung red o'er the river bed, He mumbled the bones of the slain. Loud he howled through the moonlit wastes, Loud answered his kith and kin; From west and east to the crimson feast The clan came trooping in. O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof, They fought and clawed and tore."[30] [30] Adapted from Langdon Smith. Not a very pretty picture, is it? Yet it's true. But, fortunately, so is this one of the happiest hours of the caveman's grandchild. "Oh, for boyhood's painless play, Sleep that wakes in laughing day, Health that mocks the doctor's rules, Knowledge never learned of schools: Of the wild bee's morning chase, Of the wild flower's time and place; Flight of fowl, and habitude Of the tenants of the wood; How the tortoise bears his shell, How the woodchuck digs his cell And the ground-mole sinks his well. Of the black wasp's cunning way, Mason of his walls of clay And the architectural plans Of gray hornet artisans. For, eschewing books and tasks, Nature answers all he asks."[31] [31] Whittier's "Barefoot Boy." Some boy wrote to John Burroughs once, and asked how to become a naturalist. In his reply, Burroughs said: "I have spent seventy-seven years in the world, and they have all been contented and happy years. I am certain that my greatest source of happiness has been my love of nature; my love of the farm, of the birds, the animals, the flowers, and all open-air things. "You can begin to be a naturalist right where you are, in any place, in any season."[32] [32] "Pictured Knowledge." [Illustration: WHOSE AUTOGRAPH IS THIS? If you're a boy scout you will probably recognize this autograph in the snow. If not look it up in the Boy Scout Handbook.]