‘A good book needs no preface; a bad book deserves none.’ That is no doubt true. But when a student of theology turns aside (as it would seem) from his proper concern, when a normally active citizen in the middle of a great war fills much of his time with the life and work of a naturalist of the seventeenth century, it is reasonable that he should give some account of his eccentricity. Hence this personal explanation.

The history of science, with every respect for Mr Crowther and even Dr Hogben, has not yet been written. Nor in these days, when the use and abuse of scientific achievements are so significant, can the subject be regarded as unimportant. But my concern is not with the general record of man's discovery of the scientific method or of his application of it to the service of his needs and ambitions, so much as with one consequence of those events. As a theologian my primary task long ago convinced me of the importance of the change in man's aesthetic, moral and religious outlook which had accompanied and in large measure inspired the scientific movement. It was plain to me as a parson that the mixed folk whom I met as an entomologist and a bird-watcher had found an interest in nature which was singularly rich in educative and recreational value.