128 NATURE .STUDY. 



heard-of gift — that a moment of love shall give them the fecundity 

 of forty generations ! 



" Creatures so highly privileged have evidently some task to exe- 

 cute, some great and important mission which renders them indis- 

 pensable, and makes them an essential part of the harmony of the 

 world. Suns are necessary, but so also are gnats. Grand is the 

 order of the Milky Way, and no less that of the bee-hive. Who 

 knows but that the life of the stars -may be of minor importance ? 

 I see that some of them vanish? and God dispenses with them. 

 But no genus of the Insect World ever fails to answer to the sum- 

 mons. If a single species of ants should disappear, their loss 

 would be serious, and cause a dangerous gap in the universal econ- 

 omy." 



The Bald Eagle. 



W. J. Broderip was a genial English naturalist of the 

 first half of the last century, who observed carefully, 

 thought much, and jotted down his observations and re- 

 flections in a quaint and entertaining stjde. His '• lycaves 

 from the Note-Book of a Naturalist" is still read with 

 profit as well as pleasure by naturalists who turn wearily 

 from much that is now useless lumber which was written 

 or compiled in Mr. Broderip's time. Even at this day, a 

 writer upon the subject of instinct would scarcely consider 

 his own work complete without reference to the j^oung 

 beaver that, deprived from birth of the least opportunity 

 for parental precept or example, began the construction of 

 a dam on the third floor of a Eondon house, nearly eighty 

 years ago. 



Mr. Broderip was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and 

 took a specially active interest in the living wild creatures 

 in the Zoological Gardens. His story of the young con- 

 dor that was hatched and brooded by a common Dorking 

 fowl will be reprinted in Nature Study some day, for 

 " Eeaves " from the " Note Book " are quite rare now, 

 and not easily accessible to youthful readers ; but just at 



I 



