58 The South Australian Naturalist. 



he reveals an intimate acquaintance with the rising and setting 

 of the constellations, the restless movements and noisy assemblies 

 of the birds at the change of the seasons, the care of the sick and 

 the various labours of the bees, their attendance on their queen, 

 and the providence and organization of the ants. Unlike many 

 of our modern naturalists, he was not content W'ith mere observa- 

 tion and classification, but sought a meaning, a significance, and 

 a guiding intelligence behind phenomena. Borrowing from 

 Pythagoras, he writes: — "The Deity, they tell us, pervades all 

 earth and the expanse of sea and the deep vault of heaven ; from 

 Him flocks, herds, men, wild beasts of every sort, each creature 

 at its birth draws the bright thread of life ; further, to Him all 

 things return, are restored and reduced: death has no place 

 among them, but they fly up alive into the ranks of the stars 

 and take their seats aloft in the sky. ' ' 



Humboldt, the great traveller and naturalist, expresses a 

 high appreciation of the researches of Pliny. The ancients lived 

 closer to Nature, and identified themselves with the general 

 scheme of things. Tlieir love of Nature was more that of the 

 artist or the poet. They did not make a careful inventory of 

 their mistress's charms, e.g. : 



Item: A Grecian profile; 



Item: A rosebud of a mouth; 



Item : An eye blue as the sea ; 



Item : A stately column of a neck, etc. 



They were so deeply impressed with her beauty and excellence 

 that they could not coldly scan the curve of the lip, the perfect 

 contour of the cheek, or the colour of the pupil, but were fas- 

 cinated by her general charm and by her bounty. The critical 

 faculty had not been so sedulously developed as in our modern 

 days, and if they relied too much on authority, our modern in- 

 vestigators are not altogether emancipated from that reverence 

 for the great achievements of the leaders and pioneers of epoch- 

 making discoveries. The old philosophers made mistakes which 

 would excite the ridicule of Macaulay's "Schoolboy,'' but who 

 can say that many of our fine spun theories may not prove equally 

 laughable to our posterity? 



