“I get along in my studies in Botany very well indeed, and he has described two or three plants, one of which was Marsh-marigold or the Cowslip. He has analyzed the cherry blossom”; and Mr. Gunn wrote a footnote to the same letter saying: “He seems delighted with Botany and makes close observations.” This quality of his mind, cropping out in its earliest essays, appears again and again in these juvenile letters. They are well worth quoting, as early witnesses to the attentive eye, the retentive memory, the descriptive power which were part of his natural and congenital outfit for his life-work. One of them divides its pages between art and natural history: “My paints have given me a great deal of fun. I bought a blank book and copied several pictures in it out of my ‘Harris’s Insects,’ and I also painted them, some from the description and some from the plates. I have one page of beetles, another page of butterflies, etc., etc. I guess when I get it done it will be ‘_betterish nische_.’ Everybody comes to me lately to have [Illustration: _William Hamilton Gibson_ _Age, 13_] me draw and paint them a valentine, which of course I do for some of them. I wish that in your next letter you would send me a couple of paint brushes, for the hairs of mine keep coming out all the while. “That same feeling has come over me that I used to have last summer when I was after bugs and butterflies. The other day, it came very strong and I went out to look for cocoons, and I looked and looked, but saw nothing, and gave it up entirely, but as I was coming on my way into the house I saw some small pear-trees and I thought that I would look on them and I did, and saw a bunch of leaves. I looked and saw there was a Cecropia cocoon done up in them which made me feel like an eagle darting at her prey. I grabbed the prize and kept it and have got it yet. We have got a new minister which I told you about. I showed it to him and he told me to call and see him and bring it to him and he then asked me if any boy had a microscope. I told him yes (for Commodore has got a Craig’s Microscope) and the next evening Commodore and I took my ‘Harris’s Insects’ and showed it to him. He was much pleased with it and is going to get one. We did not make a very long call, but it was a nice one.” Another letter to his mother enlists her help in his entomological interests: