PBEFACi!. ^ 



violet and the stramonium, the ground-cherry 

 ftnd the night-shade, the clover and the net- 

 tle, the woodbine and the poison ivy are all 

 bound in a volume. Man has done all the 

 classifying, all the distinctive grouping. It 

 is the botanist, not Nature, who does the as- 

 sorting, separating and naming. The rain 

 and the sunshine find the weed as well as 

 the corn, and touch it as lovingly. 



One of the most distinguished of American 

 scientists chanced to read the paper on the 

 " Anatomy of Bird-song " while it was in the 

 manuscript. "Nobody will care for this,'' 

 he said. " You will not have twenty readers. 

 Why, when I was attending Huxley's lect- 

 ures in London, he spoke to more empty 

 benches than to auditors. The truth is, dry 

 bones are very poor picking at best." 



This was not news to me; but I resented 

 it all the same, for I see in geology, in compar- 

 ative anatomy, in paleontology, in geograph- 

 ical botany, and in comprehensive analysis 

 of Nature generally, the basis of all human 

 inspiration, for these include the universe 

 and man. Divine inspiration comes of God, 

 and is independent. We must take it without 

 a question. Our study of man is feeble and 

 narrow, if we make it all foreground, leav- 

 ing out the perspective of natural history. 

 What is the human story comprised between 

 the oldest monuments and the books of to- 

 day, if we compare it with the story sug- 

 gested by the hints of geology ? What is the 

 romance of the Cid, or the Eomance of the 

 Eose, or the Iliad, beside the romance of the 

 peat bogs, or of the coal-measures, or even 

 of the American mounds ? There was a 

 Golden Age of song, there was the idyllic life 

 of Arcadia ; but beyond these there was a 



