SCIENCE AND ART 187 



we watch the literal myriads of starlings circling 

 over one of their favourite resorts, resembling 

 from a mile off the thick smoke writhing over a 

 crater, or a swarm of locusts darkening the sky 

 with a thick curtain of wings, we feel the abun- 

 dance of life. When we watch the flying fishes 

 rising in hundreds before the prow of the steamer, 

 like grasshoppers before us as we walk through a 

 rich meadow; or the storm-petrels flying over the 

 waves with dangling feet, never touching land 

 except to nest; or the salmon leaping the falls; 

 or the elvers on then* journey upstream; we feel 

 the insurgence of life. When we gaze at the cut 

 stem of a huge American Sequoia, whose annual 

 rings show us that it was a sapling a few years 

 after the fall of Rome, we are in the presence of 

 another form of the Will to Live. And what 

 shall we say of the emotional value of looking 

 backward over the history of organisms, to see 

 life slowly creeping upwards through the ages, 

 adapting itself to every niche of opportunity, 

 expressing itself with increasing freedom and 

 fulness, with more and more emergence of Mind? 

 Wherever we turn in our Natural History we 

 are brought up against the abundance, the insur- 

 gence, the effectiveness, the intricacy, and the 

 mystery of life in all of which, in addition to 

 the great gift of unsolved problems, there is 

 unstinted food for fancy, an unending supply of 



