On the Study of Natural History. 221 
At really requires not a little patience to quote such para- 
graphs, and I should have passed them unnoticed, but that. 
they originate in high authority, and may lead to error. — 
They prove the necessity of our acquiring information, to be 
able to judge for ourselves, and correct the false impressions 
made by ignorant pretenders in science. It is an old maxim, 
‘buy truth and sell it not,” and the poet Lucretius very 
happily says, “it is a pleasure incomparable for the mind of 
man, to be settled, landed, and fortified in the certainty of 
truth, and from thence to descry and behold the errors, per- 
turbations, labours, and wanderings up. and down of other 
men.” 
The investigation of nature cannot fail to be valuable. It 
engages all our intellectual faculties to the greatest extent, 
and by its ardent pursuit, the general stock of useful infor- 
mation is increased. The field for rational inquiry is exten- 
sive, and profitable beyond conception. The student drinks 
from the purest fountains with unceasing pleasure, and unal- 
layed thirst. The longest life is insufficient to gather all the 
fruits that are within our reach. 
n we reflect on the long chain that connects us with 
the most imperfect of animals, the infusoriz, what a s 
for contemplation is afforded to our astonished imaginations ! 
Each link is worthy of peculiar attention, and yet, how neg- 
lected are they, comparatively ! e vegetable and mineral 
moleculz attracted and aggregated by their polarity into a 
‘egular mass, so mathematically correct as to surpass the 
possibility of being equalled by the hand of man. es 
Smellie says, “* superficial men, of, what is the same thing, 
men who ayoid the trouble of serious thinking, wonder at the 
design of producing certain insects and reptiles: but they 
do not consider that the annihilation of any one of these 
species, though some of them are inconvenient, and even 
noxious to man, would make a blank in nature, igi ood 
destructive to other species which feed upon them. These, 
in their turn, would be the cause of destroying other aah 
and the system of destruction would gradually proceed, 
