124 London Insects. 



used independently, the telescope or microscope sets 

 one thinking most, but together they must make the 

 least imaginative of us feel what a very little space 

 it is after all that man, with all his many inventions, 

 occupies in creation. 



" Vast chain of being ! which from God began. 

 Natures ethereal, human angel, man, 

 Beast, bird, fish, insect. What no eye can see, 

 No glass can reach. From infinite to thee, 

 From thee to nothing." 



" Glasses " have much improved since Pope wrote 

 these lines 1 50 years or so ago, but have brought us 

 as yet no nearer an upward or downward vanishing 

 point of possible life. 



Each increase of power of the telescope has, on 

 the contrary, only revealed fresh worlds beyond, and 

 in the microscope only brought us nearer something 

 like ocular demonstration, that there is truth in the 

 homely lines which tell that 



" Little fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite 'em, 

 And those fleas have other fleas, and so ad infinitum." 



In which ever direction we look it is the same. More 

 knowledge of nature means more consciousness of 

 life all round us. 



If the exploring voyage of the "Challenger" has 

 proved any one thing more clearly than another, it 

 is that the old idea that ocean life ceased at a certain 

 depth has no foundation in fact. 



There is one link in the chain of life, and only 

 one, which Londoners have ample means of study- 

 ing in the open air the order of " insects." Beasts 

 to live naturally require solitude and room to wander 

 and breed. Birds scarcely less. But for many of 



