DELIGHTS OF SCIENCE. 45 



scribed ; it throws out no feelers into other, wider 

 regions ; it generates no thought ; it leads nowhither ; 

 it is terminal. Therefore, I say the finale of the table 

 is an anticlimax for a hunter ; unless, indeed, he is 

 huntino- for subsistence, and then of coui^se his finale 

 becomes proportionately aggrandised. 



No such anticlimax was mine ; no such terminal 

 enjoyment ; my finale was not final. If, as a matter 

 of fact, the dissecting-table was the scene on which my 

 captures made a last appearance, this last appearance 

 was the end of a long series of episodes intermediate 

 between the capture of prey and the incision of the 

 scalpel. And even this finale was not, strictly speak- 

 ing, a finis ; for when the last shred of delicate tissue 

 had been examined under the Microscope, when various 

 parts of the animal had been made into "preparations" 

 for after-study, when everything to the physical eye 

 may have seemed concluded, no end was reached, no 

 dead wall of terminal blankness ; on the contrary, the 

 philosophical eye followed the devious paths of specu- 

 lation, into which new facts conducted ; and thus the 

 feast of reason and the flow of physiology, generated 

 pleasures superior to the j)leasures of the ordinary 

 hunter by quite transcendent degrees. I dined as well 

 as Brown, thanks to my poulterer and fishmonger. If 

 the truth were known, my game was perhaps better 

 than his. We both dined, 



'•' But oh ! the diflference to me !" 



On an equality as regards mere plenitude and diges- 

 tive beatitude, how far below the "reaches of my soul" 



