190 GLAUCUS; OR, 
ferent circumstances, and especially those movements 
which seem to us mere vagaries, undirected by any 
suggestible motive or cause, well examined. A rich 
fruit of result, often new and curious and unex- 
pected, will, I am sure, reward anyone who studies 
living animals in this way. The most interesting 
parts, by far, of published Natural History are those 
minute, but graphic particulars, which have been 
gathered up by an attentive watching of individual 
animals.” 
Mr. Gosse’s own books, certainly, give proof 
enough of this. We need only direct the reader to 
his exquisitely humorous account of the ways and 
works of a captive soldier-crab,1 to show them how 
much there is to be seen, and how full Nature is also 
of that ludicrous element of which we spoke above. 
And, indeed, it is in this form of Natural History: 
not in mere classification, and the finding out of 
means, and quarrellings as to the first discovery of 
that beetle or this buttercup,—too common, aias ! 
among mere closet-collectors,—“ endless genealogies,” 
1 Aquarium, p. 163. 
