36 GLAUCUS; OR, 
particles :”—one smiles at it now: yet these men 
were no less sensible than we; and if we know 
better, it is only because other men, and those few 
and far between, have laboured amid disbelief, 
ridicule, and error; needing again and again to 
retrace their steps, and to unlearn more than they 
learnt, seeming to go backwards when they were 
really progressing most: and now we have entered 
into their labours, and find them, as I have just 
said, more wondrous than all the poetic dreams 
of a Bonnet or a Darwin. For who, after all, to 
take a few broad instances (not to enlarge on 
the great root-wonder of a number of distinct 
individuals connected by a common life, and form- 
ing a seeming plant invariable in each species), 
would have dreamed of the “bizarreries” which 
these very zoophytes present in their classifi- 
cation ? 
You go down to any shore after a gale of wind, and 
pick up a few delicate little sea-ferns. You have 
two in your hand, which probably look to you, even 
under a good pocket magnifier, identical or nearly 
