III.] ORIGIN OF TASTE FOR SCIENCE. 195
children, idiots, and magpies, often leads to the study of the things collected, and is of immense use to a man who wishes to study objects that must be collected in large numbers. I have been told of an astronomer whose primary taste was a love of polished brass instruments and smooth mechanical movements, that nothing satisfied this taste so fully as work with telescopes, and from loving the instruments he soon learnt to love the work for which they were used. A taste for careful drawing works well into engineering and into systematic botany or zoology. A love of adventure and field sports may be an extremely useful element in the character of a man who follows geology or zoology.
As a rough numerical estimate, it seems that 6 out of every 10 men of science were gifted by nature with a strong taste for it ; certainly not 1 person in 10, taken at haphazard, possesses such an instinct ; therefore I contend that its presence adds five-fold at least, to the chance of scientific success. The converse way of looking at the question gives a similarly large estimate. Certainly one-half of the population have no
