248 DIGONEUTISM 



These cases might perhaps be multiplied, and it 

 should be added that there is no reversal of the 

 ride : among all the butterflies properly compar- 

 able on the two continents, there is no single 

 instance where the European hntterJJy has niore 

 hroods than the American. 



This result of the comparison of the annual his- 

 tories of similar European and American butter- 

 flies thus furnishes but another instance of that 

 intensity which seems to characterize all life in 

 America. The expenditure of nervous and vital 

 energy, against which physicians vainly inveigh, 

 which superannuates our merchants, lawyers, cler- 

 gymen, and other professional men, is not induced 

 by the simple passion for gain, place, power, or 

 knowledge, but by an uncontrollable restlessness, a 

 constant dissatisfaction with present attainments, 

 which marks us as a hurrying, energetic, enter- 

 prising people. My own experience has been that 

 studies of precisely the same nature and undertaken 

 under similar external conditions are accompanied 

 by a very different mental state on the two conti- 

 nents. In Europe we are content to plod industri- 

 ously on, unconscious of the need of relaxation ; in 

 America we bend with nervous intensity to our 

 work, and carry the same excitement into the 



