134 THE RECOMPENSE OF PATIENCE. 
What miracles of patience, of delicacy, of skilful management! In 
exact proportion as one descends the scale of littleness, the insufficiency 
of our means proves more and more embarrassing. We can touch 
nothing without breaking it. Our large fingers will hold no more: 
they cast a shadow, they throw obstacles in our way. Our instru- 
ments are too coarse to seize upon such atoms; therefore we refine 
them. But then how can we put the invisible point in an invisible 
object ? The two terms in sight avoid us. Only one single passion— 
the unconquerable love of life and Nature, the undefinable, indescrib- 
able tenderness, a feminine sensibility directed by a masculine, scientific 
genius—could succeed in so great an aim. Our Hollander loved the 
tiny creatures. He dreaded wounding them so much that he spared 
the scalpel. He avoided as far as he could the steel, and preferred the 
firm but nevertheless the delicate ivory. He fashioned in it infinitely 
small instruments, sharpened by aid of the microscope, which would 
not work rapidly, and compelled the student to make his observations 
with due patience. 
His tender respect for Nature found its reward. While still a 
youth, and a simple student at Leyden University, he had two strong 
holds upon her in her highest and lowest manifestations. He was the 
first to see and understand the maternity of the insect and the human 
maternity. The latter subject, so delicate and yet so grand—in which 
he laboured conjointly with his master at Leyden—I put aside: let us 
dwell upon the former. He dissected and described the ovaries of the 
bee: found them in the pretended “king ;” and proved that she was 
a queen, or rather a mother. In like manner he explained the mater- 
nity of the ant; an all-important discovery, which revealed the true 
mystery of the superior insect, and initiated us into the real char- 
acter of these societies, which are not monarchies, but maternal repub- 
lics and vast public nurseries, each of which raises up a people. 
The most general fact in the life of insects, and the great law of 
their existence, is the Metamorphosis. Changes which in other creatures 
are obscure, are in them exceedingly conspicuous. The three ages 
of the insect appear to be three creatures. Who would have dared to 
assert that the grub, with its heavy luxuriance of digestive organs and 
