CHAPTER I. 



ZOOLOGICAL REMARKS. 



" Each shell, each crawling insect, holds a rank 

 Important in the plan of Him who fram'd 

 This scale of beings ; holds a rank, which lost, 

 Would break the chain, and leave behind a gap 

 Which Nature's self would rue." 



" THINK you that a drop of water, which to the vulgar eye 

 is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye of the 

 physicist, who knows that its elements are held together 

 by a force which, if suddenly liberated, would produce a 

 flash of lightning ? Think you that what is carelessly 

 looked upon by the uninitiated as a mere snow-flake does 

 not suggest higher associations to one who has seen through 

 a microscope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of 

 snow crystals ? Think you that the rounded rock, marked 

 with parallel scratches, calls up as much poetry in an 

 ignorant mind as in the mind of a geologist, who knows 

 that on this rock a glacier slid a million years ago ? 



The truth is, that those who have never entered upon 

 scientific pursuits are blind to most of the poetry by which 

 they are surrounded. Whoever has not in youth collected 



