STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 11 



to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, 

 but akin. The Life that stirs within us stirs with- 

 in them. "We are all " parts of one transcendent 

 whole." The scales fall from our eyes when we 

 think of this ; it is as if a new sense had been vouch- 

 safed to us, and we learn to look at Nature with a 

 more intimate and personal love. 



Life every where ! The air is crowded with birds 

 beautiful, tender, intelligent birds to whom life 

 is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of 

 love. The air is swarming with insects those lit- 

 tle animated miracles. The waters are peopled 

 with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so 

 small that one hundred and fifty millions of them 

 would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large 

 that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. 

 The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, 

 star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animal- 

 cules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the 

 silent boring of soft creatures, and blackened with 

 countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets. 



Life every where! on the earth, in the earth, 

 crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, run- 

 ning. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt 

 us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are sa- 

 luted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter 

 of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled 

 rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is 

 this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, 

 or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted 



