CHAPTER II. 



DESIRES FOR ABUNDANCE — THE THREAD-CAPSULES: ARE THEY NET- 

 TLING ORGANS? — FUTILITY OF OBSERVATION UNCONTROLLED BY 

 EXPERIMENT — STRUCTURE OF AN ANEMONE — GENERAL LAW OP 

 DEVELOPMENT — DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN HAND— REPRODUC- 

 TION OF ANEMONES — THEIR OVARIES AND SPERMATOZOA — ARE 

 ANEMONES OF SEPARATE SEXES? 



Chaeles Lamb, in one of liis exquisitely humorous 

 letters, remembering the prodigal command of paper 

 which he enjoyed as a clerk in the India House, and 

 comparing it with his forced stinginess in that article 

 now he is no longer clerk, refers to the probable feelings 

 of Adam when purchasing a pennyworth of apples, 

 ''from an applewoman's stall in Mesopotamia," and 

 recalling the prodigal abundance of Paradise. Dr 

 Johnson said that never but once in his life had he 

 found himself possessor of as much wall-fruit as he 

 could eat. These two lingering retrospects of former 

 jDlenty appeal to me forcibly : it is true that in the 

 particular case of apples, a matured taste, fortified by 

 philosophy and modified by dyspepsia, renders one 

 tolerably resigned to poverty — and in the case of wall- 

 fruit, the reader, terrified by absurd rumours as to the 

 cholera-influences supposed inevitably to issue from 



