to flax-dam where flax plants are left to rot in water It smells bad and is full of insects The air is filled with the sound of buzzing bluebottles flies and the croaking of frogs Even though it is dirty and smelly the boy finds it wonderful and magical The boy's most favourite thing is the frogspawn He collects frogspawn from the flax-dam But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn Heaney also describes how the boy keeps the frogspawn in jars He enjoys watching them grow up Here we see the innocent happiness of childhood The child thinks the frogs are friendly and magical This stage of life is full of imagination trust and wonder Everything feels beautiful and interesting Childhood Imagination and Learning The boy also listens to his teacher Miss Walls who explains how frogspawn becomes frogs She tells the children about how the daddy frog croaks loudly and the mammy frog lays hundreds of eggs The boy also learns that the frogs look yellow in the sun and brown in the rain Here Heaney presents childhood as a time when learning feels exciting and fun The child feels close to nature He does not see anything frightening or dangerous This part of the poem celebrates the innocence of childhood Sudden Change from Excitement to Fear In the second part of the poem everything changes One hot day the boy returns to the flax-dam The air is full of a terrible smell of cow dung The frogs seem huge ugly and angry Their bodies look swollen and slimy Their movements seem threatening The boy feels they are ready to take revenge for taking their frogspawn before He thinks The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance The frogs seem like an army ready to attack The boy no longer sees them as cute I sickened turned and ran The boy becomes afraid and disgusted by the frogs He runs away He feels that nature is now angry and dangerous not lovely anymore This moment shows the end of childhood innocence He runs away and this escape shows the emotional shift from innocence to experience Significance of the Title The title Death of a Naturalist is very important At the beginning of the poem the boy is a naturalist He loves the simple joy of nature Everything seems beautiful and magical But as he grows up the naturalist inside him dies So the death in the title is not a real death It is the death of childhood innocence It is the death of simple excitement It is the beginning of a new more mature understanding of the world As children grow up they start to see the world differently They learn that nature is not always soft and friendly In conclusion Death of a Naturalist is a touching poem about growing up It shows how childhood wonder changes into fear Heaney uses simple images of frogs to describe the loss of innocence