i THE WEALTH OF LIFE 3 



Year Book ' of the flow and ebb of the living tide. 

 He should select some nook or pool for special study, 

 seeking a more and more intimate acquaintance with its 

 tenants, watching them first and using the eyes of other 

 students afterwards. Nor is there any difficulty in keep- 

 ing at least freshwater aquaria simply glass globes with 

 pond water and weeds in which, within small compass, 

 much wealth of life may be observed. Those students 

 are specially fortunate who have within reach such 

 collections as the Zoological Gardens and the British 

 Museum in London ; but this is no reason for failing to 

 appreciate the life of the sea-shore, the moor-pond, and 

 the woods, or for neglecting to gain the confidence of 

 fishermen and gamekeepers, or of any whose knowledge 

 of natural history has been gathered from the experience 

 of their daily life. 



1. Variety of Life. Between one form of life and 

 another there often seems nothing in common save that 

 both are alive. Thus life is characteristically asleep in 

 plants, it is generally more or less awake in animals. 

 Yet among the latter, does it not doze in the tortoise, 

 does it not fever in the hot-blooded bird ? Or contrast 

 the phlegmatic amphibian and the lithe fish, the limpet 

 on the rock and the energetic squid, the barnacle pas- 

 sively pendent on the floating log and the frolicsome 

 shrimp, the cochineal insect like a gall upon the leaf 

 and the busy bee, the sedentary corals and the free- 

 swimming jellyfish, the sponge on the rock and the 

 minute Night-Light Infusorians which make the waves 

 sparkle in the summer darkness. No genie of Oriental 

 fancy was more protean than the reality behind the 

 myth the activity of life. 



2. Haunts of Life. The variety of haunt and home 

 is not less striking. There is the great and wide sea with 

 swimming things innumerable, our modern giants the 

 whales, the seals and walruses and the sluggish sea-cows, 

 the flippered penguins and Mother Carey's chickens, the 

 marine turtles and swift poisonous sea-serpents, the true 

 fishes in prolific shoals, the cuttles and other pelagic 

 molluscs ; besides hosts of armoured crustaceans, swiftly 



