Lect. IV.] MOTHER CAREY. 119 



a homely illustration in the inimitable Wafer Babies of Charles 

 Xingsley. With fine instinct, Kingsley caught the genuine spirit of 

 modern Biology, and rightly judged that children should be indoc- 

 ti'inated with it. One short quotation will serve our purpose here. 

 Tom, the AYater Baby, comes to Mother Carey's shrine (Mother 

 Carey, we need hardly remmd the reader, is tlie name — not a very 

 dignified one, it must be o^^^led — applied by our poet to Dame 

 Xature). The little man approaches with awe and wonderment, 

 expecting, of course (like some grown people who ought to know 

 better), to find Dame Xature "snipping, piecing, fitting, cobbling, 

 basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding, 

 Dueasuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go 

 to work to make anything. But, instead of that, he finds her sitting 

 <]uite still, with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea 

 with two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair 

 was as white as snow — for she Avas very old — in fact, as old as any- 

 thing which you are likely to come across, except the difference 

 between right and wrong." 



" I heard, ma'am," says Tom, " that you were always making new 

 beasts out of old." 



" So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make 

 things, my little dear. I sit here and maJie them, make themselves." 



To return from this digression. Between the morphological foix-c 

 Avithin, and the forces of nature in the external si;rroundings, there is, 

 if one may so speak, a balance struck. Thus, everywhere in nature, 

 all things are double ; one thing is set over against another ; and 

 forces, apparently antithetical and antagonistic, in and by their very 

 struggle, produce the most exquisite and perfect results. 



In the Edentata no perfection of special modification redeems them 

 from mammalian lowlmess ; they are the slow, dull, heavy-gaited 

 churls of the class to which they belong, whilst the sharp-eyed 

 cat, and her sharper 0A\aier, are two of the highest and most perfect 

 forms in the class. What is it that lies at the root of this difference ? 

 I answer, the relative development of the central nervous system 

 — the organ of the mind. A similar difference to that which we 

 note between the Edentata on the one hand, and the boy and his 

 cat on the other, also exists between these two types of the higher 

 ]\Iammals, of which the singing bird is always in fear — namely. 



