4 GLAUCUS ; OR, 
around you at every step, stranger than ever opium- 
eater dreamed, and yet to be seen at no greater 
expense than a very little time and trouble. 
Perhaps you smile, in answer, at the notion of 
becoming a “Naturalist:” and yet you cannot 
deny that there must be a fascination in the study 
of Natural History, though what it is is as yet 
unknown to you. Your daughters, perhaps, have 
been seized with the prevailing “ Pteridomania,” 
and are collecting and buying ferns, with Ward's 
cases wherein to keep them (for which you have to 
pay), and wrangling over unpronounceable names of 
species (which seem to be different in each new 
Fern-book that they buy), till the Pteridomania 
seems to you somewhat of a bore: and yet you 
cannot deny that they‘find an enjoyment in it, and 
are more active, more cheerful, more self-forgetful 
over it, than they would have been over novels and 
gossip, crochet and Berlin-wool. At least you will 
confess that the abomination of “Fancy-work ”— 
that standing cloak for dreamy idleness (not to 
mention the injury which it does to poor starving 
