22 THREE KINGDOMS. 



eagerly for nature's hidden treasures. We see them 

 scouring the prairies of Kansas ; climbing the foot- 

 hills of the Sierras ; discovering beautiful caves in the 

 Rocky Mountains ; analyzing magnolia blossoms in 

 Mississippi ; killing rattlesnakes on their own door- 

 steps in Colorado ; studying geology in England ; 

 gathering edelweiss from the slopes of the Alps ; 

 wandering, by permit, through New York's Central 

 Park ; spying out specimens from the mica mines of 

 Vermont ; picking up tarantulas and scorpions in 

 Texas ; searching for the flowers and insects of the 

 Argentine Republic ; gathering algae and sea-shells on 

 the coast of Florida ; growing wise in the paleontology 

 of Iowa ; arranging the variously colored sands of the 

 Mississippi river in curious bottles ; in Massachusetts, 

 anxious to know whether "the Limnanthemum of our 

 waters has roots ; " sending from Chicago to learn 

 about the centre of buoyancy ; holding field-meetings 

 in Illinois ; celebrating the birthday of Professor 

 Agassiz (May 28), in many States, with a picnic and 

 appropriate exercises ; giving entertainments and real- 

 izing enough to buy a cabinet and have thirty dollars 

 over to start a library in Oregon ; making wonderful 

 collections in Virginia ; enjoying the assistance and 

 listening to the lectures of eminent scientists in Phila- 

 delphia ; enrolling scholars and teachers in Connecti- 

 cut and Rhode Island ; determining to become pro- 

 fessors in the District of Columbia ; writing fraternal 

 messages from Canada ; selecting quartz crystals from 

 the hot springs of Arkansas ; discovering Geastrums 

 on Long Island ; and everywhere learning to detect 

 the beautiful in the common, and the wonderful in 

 the before despised. 



