THE LILY-STARS. 217 



way home the bottle was constantly being raised to 

 my loving regard, that I might feast myself upon the 

 waving grace of those pink-and- white feathers ; and 

 I thought of the poetical passage in which Edward 

 Forbes expresses his emotions about these Crinoidea 

 which " raise up a vision of an early world, a world 

 the potentates of which were not men, but animals — 

 of seas on whose tranquil surfaces myriads of convol- 

 uted Nautili sported, and in whose depths millions of 

 Lily- stars waved wilfully on their slender stems. Now, 

 the Lily- stars and Nautili are almost gone ; a few 

 lovely stragglers of those once abounding tribes remain 

 to evidence the wondrous forms and structures of their 

 comrades. Other beings, not less wonderful, and 

 scarcely less graceful, have replaced them ; while the 

 seas in which they flourished have become lands 

 whereon man in his columned cathedrals and mazy 

 palaces emulates the beauty and symmetry of their 

 fluted stems and chambered cells." * 



The delight of getting new animals is like the delight 

 of childhood in any novelty, an impulse that moves the 

 soul through the intricate paths of knowledge — know- 

 ledge which is but broken wonder ; and this delight 

 the naturalist has constantly awaiting him. Satiety is 

 not possible, for Nature is inexhaustible. Knowledge 

 unfolds vista after vista, for ever stretching inimitably 

 distant, the horizon moving as we move. New facts 

 connect themselves with new forms ; the most casual 

 observation often becomes a spark of inextinguishable 

 thought, running along trains of inflammable suggestion. 



* History of Br'dish Star-fishes, p. 2. 



