airy, all but impalpable wings, was he to join the Gods, a shade, 

 a shadow, a breath. His Eternities became elastic, as his 

 thoughts, playing around the facts of Nature perceived by him, 

 made Deities out of Matter finely spun out in dreams. At length 

 he perceived that this was an endless procession in which he was 

 moving in his clan or leading on horseback Homeric hosts. At 

 the last we are expressed by chemical formulas, as other com- 

 pounds of the materials of worlds. But what capabilities are not 

 ours in Evolution ! I hear the noises making all over the globe, 

 as we are crowding together by increase of population. We are 

 more brutal to each other and selfish under this struggle for ex- 

 istence than the Jews, and this despite our Christianity which we 

 have taken from them, and which is so full of panaceas against 

 the evils of overcrowding. That is the test of the practical value 

 of belief, when it betters our condition. What a range of thought 

 one can run over, catching butterflies along the hedge-rows. I 

 come back to my first surprise, when, as a boy, I caught Cicin- 

 delas on the South beach of Staten Island. I saw that there were 

 immense questions hanging about unsolved, as I was bottling my 

 captures. These insects were part of a Universe with Stars and 

 Suns. I could not understand the life I was taking ; and then I 

 felt the grief that arises when we become conscious of the role 



O 



played by Destruction. I abandoned collecting insects, even 

 walking carefully so as not to bruise the golden-rods and purple 

 asters that fringed my path. This world became filled with pain, 

 and I quarreled with a friend who pinned some delicately colored 

 species alive, rather than risk the effects of anaesthetic poisons on 

 their fugitive tints. I felt there was a certain selfishness in my 

 enjoyment of Nature. How much, alas, we must do to get 

 knowledge I was soon to discover in the dissecting room ! Yet 

 I cannot reconcile myself to, nor grasp the reasons for vivisection. 

 If there is one thing that is hateful to my soul it is this. When, 

 in after life, I found a man who, in order to exhibit himself before 

 a mixed assemblage as is present at the meeting of the Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science, was willing to cut up a 

 cat, I knew that I had before me a man deficient in moral sense, 

 whom horrors attracted, who brought himself into note by the 

 ease with which he moved among the miseries that he inflicted. 

 The audience cannot be thus instructed ; and the most sensible 

 are probably only shocked at the exhibition and surprised to 

 find themselves its witnesses. I feel somewhat guilty in having 

 induced my reader to come- this far, as I hope, through a little 

 display of philosophy, to a lesson against cruelty. But, even in 

 preparing insects for the cabinet, there is a great choice of means, 

 and I hope that the enthusiasm of the student will not cause 

 him to forget that these little creatures suffer and feel pain. 

 Early in my entomological career I stopped collecting and joined 

 the Battle of the Synonyms instead, and gave myself up to de- 



