naturalist

“Trinity received “Birds of America” in 1900 as a gift from Dr. Gordon Russell, a physician and alumnus who was a collector of ornithological and naturalist art.”

“Its author – Henry Handel Richardson was the nom de plume of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson – had indeed read, and on occasion translated, these great European writers and they provided the naturalist style and intellectual inquiry resonant in all her fiction. […] The honesty and authorial detachment that is so remarkable in her work – she is one of the least obtrusive, least judgmental of all the great naturalist writers – seems to come from a distance, almost as though the particularly acute insight of the adult writer could only be seen through the filter of childhood experience.”

“It has also been asserted, by some naturalists, that men do not attain their full growth and strength till thirty; but that women arrive at maturity by twenty.”

“I will leave off all my childish fooleries and diversions, and set about studying with such a rage, that when you come back next year, you may find the tongue I have now in my mouth more forky than that of some serpents mentioned by Pliny the naturalist.”

“The beauty and brilliancy of this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it.”