there will be a noble
humility in the act. You will confess to the public that you
consider yourself only fit to catch beetles; by which very
confession you will prove yourself fit for much finer things than
catching beetles; and meanwhile, as I said before, you will be at
least out of harm's way. At a foreign barrack once, the happiest
officer I met, because the most regularly employed, was one who
spent his time in collecting butterflies. He knew nothing about
them scientifically--not even their names. He took them simply for
their wonderful beauty and variety; and in the hope, too--in which
he was really scientific--that if he carefully kept every form which
he saw, his collection might be of use some day to entomologists at
home. A most pleasant gentleman he was; and, I doubt not, none the
worse soldier for his butterfly catching. Commendable, also, in my
eyes, was another officer--whom I have not the pleasure of knowing--
who, on a remote foreign station, used wisely to escape from the
temptations of the world into an entirely original and most pleasant
hermitage. For finding--so the story went--that many of the finest
insects kept to the tree-tops, and never came to ground at all, he
used to settle himself among the boughs of some tree in the tropic
forests, with a long-handled net and plenty of cigars, and pass his
hours in that airy flower-garden, making dashes every now and then
at some splendid monster as it fluttered round his head. His
example need not be followed by every one; but it must be allowed
that--at least as long as he was in his tree--he was neither
dawdling, grumbling, spending money, nor otherwise harming himself,
and perhaps his fellow-creatures, from sheer want of employment.

One word more, and I have done. If I was allowed to give one
special piece of advice to a young officer, whether of the army or
navy, I would say: Respect scientific men; associate with them;
learn from them; find them to be, as you will usually, the most
pleasant and instructive of companions--but always respect them.
Allow them chivalrously, you who have an acknowledged rank, their
yet unacknowledged rank; and treat them as all the world will treat
them in a higher and truer state of civilisation. They do not yet
wear the Queen's uniform; they are not yet accepted servants of the
State; as they will be in some more perfectly organised and
civilised land: but they are soldiers nevertheless, and good
soldi