254 Kansas Academy of Science. 



Emerson says: "The crowing fortune of a man is to be born to 

 some pursuit which furnishes him employment and happiness, 

 whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, 

 or songs." 



One can conceive of the delight in a pursuit that furnishes em- 

 ployment and happiness. But through the incongruities of life, re- 

 sulting from ignorance of and departure from law, very few are so 

 fortunate as to enjoy that happy combination. The careful study 

 of nature's works, constantly impressing us with the perfection 

 and inviolability of her laws, will help us to approach that enviable 

 condition. 



The diversity of human wants is illustrated in the field of 

 natural history study by the direction that the individual tastes 

 and inclinations lead. Some develop a natural inclination for a 

 particular field of study, and if they are rightly started in it they 

 are among the fortunate few whom Emerson had in mind. The 

 study becomes a love with them; a love that sweetens labor and duty. 



The three broad fields of nature's works, animal, vegetable, and 

 mineral, are subdivisible into numerous branches. A better ac- 

 quaintance with any one subject discloses a wide field, again subdi- 

 vided into specialties. Those who give the subject most thought 

 and study, in any direction, find that greater excellence can be ob- 

 tained by concentration upon a small field of work. 



Application and industry educate the eye as well as the hand. 

 The enthusiastic entomologist will catch the glint of a beetle's flight 

 across his path when thousands of people would not see anything. 



The writer, at one time, was showing some pretty minerals to a 

 country friend who had his son with him, a stout boy of nineteen 

 years of age. The boy asked, with astonishment, "Where did you 

 get those things?" He was told that these had been picked up in 

 rambles over the country, when he exclaimed, "I never see anything 

 like them." And he did not — and comparatively few people do. 

 Excellence acknowledges no guaranty but labor, and it takes the 

 trained eye to catch the flight of a beetle, or the form of a fossil, or 

 a crystal in the rock. Even the hues of the earth and the blue of 

 the sky have no beauty for some people. The eyes might transfer 

 to their soul the granduer of what they could take in in a sweep, 

 but they don't. In fact, we might almost believe we were daily 

 among ifien who 



' * Could strip, for all the prospect yields 

 To them, their verdure from the fields; 

 And take the radiance from the clouds 

 With which the sun his setting shrouds. ' ' 



