30 The Bible of Nature 



changefulness of everything, of the fitness of liv- 

 ing creatures, of the progressive trend of things, 

 and of the beauty which is everywhere. 



Wonder and Knowledge. Thinking of these 

 wonders arouses two general reflections. The 

 first of these, we may put in the form of a question. 

 Is any one thing really more wonderful than an- 

 other ? Does it not in great part depend on how 

 much we know about a thing, whether we call it 

 wonderful or not ? 



We pick up a pebble from the road and throw it 

 carelessly away. The geologist picks it up, and 

 begins to tell us its history, that it is water-worn, 

 though there is no longer any water near, that it 

 is part of a disguised raised beach through which 

 the road has been cut, that it is a piece of jasper 

 which was fused under great pressure millions of 

 years ago, that it must have travelled far, swept 

 down by an ancient river to a now shrunken sea, 

 and so on. Before he has gone far into his story, 

 we are interested, our horizon becomes more dis- 

 tant, and we soon begin to wonder. 



We brush aside the common weeds, which we 

 have seen so often that we have almost ceased to 

 see them at all yellow primroses and nothing 

 more sometimes, in fact, not so much. But we 

 take time to look at them, and how beautiful they 

 become in our eyes, how intricate, how full of indi- 

 viduality. We take time to study them, with their 



