34: NATURAL HISTORY 



enough to shut back the ocean, and broad enough 

 for nations to dwell upon. The waters teem with 

 Fishes and" Shells the air with Birds and Insects 

 the fields and forests with their higher tribes the 

 rocks with the casts and figures of those which have 

 passed away. We have more than one hundred 

 thousand species of plants ; more than two hundred 

 and fifty thousand in the animal kingdom, besides 

 the multitude belonging to geologic time. A single 

 species is sometimes represented by more than one 

 thousand distinct forms, known as varieties. It is 

 in this field, among these countless hosts of the 

 kingdom of life, that the human mind has made 

 some of its greatest triumphs. This is a matter of 

 history ; but the vastness of the work and the power 

 of mind required, and the growth of mind marked 

 by the progress of succeeding generations, can be 

 fully understood only by those who linger in this 

 higher portion of the temple of nature till they see 

 the objects as grouped by the great masters. It 

 may be said they have only discovered the plan and 

 the grouping which nature had already made. The 

 question is not altered. Nature never arranges. 



