"The rearing of larvae, . . . when joined with the entomological collection, adds immense interest to 

 Saturday afternoon rambles, and forms an admirable introduction to the study of physiology." 



Herbert Spencer, in 'Education.' 



" When simple curiosity passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the gratification of the aesthetic 

 sense of the beauty of completeness and accuracy seems more desirable than the easy indolence of ignorance ; 

 when the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of joy, and he is counted happy who is successful 

 in the search ; common knowledge of Nature passes into what our forefathers called Natural History, from 

 whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed Natural Philosophy, and now passes by the 

 name of Physical Science." 



Thomas Henry Huxley, in ' The Crayfish.' 



"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds 

 singing on the bushes, with various insects Hitting about, and with worms crawling through the dam}) earth, 

 and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each 

 other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the 

 largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; 

 Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse : a Ratio 

 of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, 

 entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of Nature, 

 from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production 

 of the higher animals, directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, 

 having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and that, whilst this planet 

 has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most 

 beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." 



Darwin, in 'The Origin of Species.' 



