68 DISCOVERY 



to work the calculations all over again. To have to 

 reconstruct an intricate work from the very beginning 

 was sufficient to appal the strongest mind, but he set 

 about the task and accomplished it. 



The man who has the spirit of science in him is ever 

 ready to sacrifice personal comfort or convenience to it. 

 It is told of Dr. Robert Grant, who was professor of 

 zoology in University College, London, and devoted to 

 his subject, that he spent eight or ten hours of a sleety 

 day in February wading in the shallows of the Firth of 

 Forth, in order to secure some specimens of a certain 

 small aquatic creature which can best be studied in a 

 living state, as its beautiful and varied colours disappear 

 when the animal is dead and immersed in spirit. When 

 showing to his class the specimens he had obtained he 

 said : "I had no companion, I had nothing to eat or 

 drink, I was wet through, my hands were half frozen, 

 and I was chilled to the marrow ; but, gentlemen, I was 

 amply rewarded ; I became the happy possessor of no 

 less than three of these beautiful little creatures, these 

 Dorises," and he held up a phial containing three 

 scarcely visible little bladder-like animals. 



If there is one branch of science more than another 

 in which the infinite patience of genius is required, it is 

 that of the study of insects ; not of insects pinned in 

 boxes or arranged in cabinets, but of the living creatures, 

 with the view of discovering something of their life- 

 history or of understanding a type of mental life on lines 

 different from ours. It is much more exciting to catch 

 insects and to kill them with cyanide or chloroform, so 

 as to convert them into specimens for a collection, than 

 it is to watch their individual characteristics as living 

 things, unravel the complicated thread of changes they 

 undergo, and observe their domestic economy. On this 



