MICRO-MAN 45 



chasing over the back of our hands ; he smiles as he sees them 

 dexterously balancing themselves on but two legs, instead of 

 six or eight as other insects have. 



Scanning closely, he beholds some of these microscopic 

 beings lift their arms in the air and apparently point some 

 object at the stars. Are they observing ? Are these telescopes ? 

 Can these animalcules, then, reckon their way thus across the 

 seas ? How curiously he will think of them ; what enchanted 

 little eyes they must have ; and in their microscopic brains 

 what thrills must run ! Upon the decks they go about in pairs ; 

 when the egg-shells have reached the shore he cannot follow 

 them upon the dark land ; they disappear, and yet he may not 

 doubt that there they draw out the accustomed course of life 

 mate and have their homes, beget their kind and die. 



As he steers away, to voyage on past Neptune and the dark, 

 I imagine him inscribing in his notebook : " Travelled some 

 time to-day alongside a considerable-sized globe, largely covered 

 with water, and revolving at a high rate of speed. Was able 

 to note upon its surface with the aid of my powerful new tele- 

 magnafecit an extraordinarily minute two-legged ant, certainly 

 able to build and scientifically to navigate vessels at least a 

 hundred and forty times his length, and therefore more than 

 three million times his bulk, and probable weight. I seemed 

 to go from wonder to wonder. How strange and fascinating 

 this cosmos grows to me as I journey and learn ! " 



There are heavy types of minds to whom lively illustrations 

 of this sort are repellent. Yet, thought of thus wise these 

 mating, building, navigating ants, able to strut about on two 

 pipe-stems and not fall is it not, after all, a marvel of marvels 

 what they have done? Shall we not wake to a new sense of 

 his achievement : this bacillus man, so infinitely little, set 

 against the universe he is learning to map ; so slight a thing, 

 the ephemeron of a moment on the dial face of time, a butterfly 

 fluttering through an unheeded hour of the cosmic day; so 

 slight and weak a thing, cringing with terror before a storm, 

 beset with ills, the prey of fear, strange and hapless estray of 

 fate's designs ! Do we not grow to a deepened respect for 

 what his reasoning brain has forged for that long-drawn-out 

 chain of observation and inference, of comparing, combining, of 

 measuring, imagining, of theorising and trying out, which link 



