36 NATURAL HISTORY 



quickened the senses and strengthened the powers 

 of Aristotle, Linnaeus, and Cuvier, and the long 

 list of the dead and living naturalists almost equally 

 worthy of mention. The record of single straggles 

 and single triumphs, had we time to recount them, 

 would prove to us the intensity of thought, the 

 taxing of the senses, and the broad generalizations 

 through which each of the great naturalists has 

 passed, each being in some points successful, and 

 in others at fault, because life was not long enough 

 to read every sign * correctly, or because he attempt- 

 ed to form an arch from the materials at hand, 

 while the key-stone perhaps w^as fashioned on an- 

 other continent, reserved as a discovery for some 

 more fortunate workman. This language of signs, 

 by which they are compelled to carry on their work, 

 is the same in kind as already referred to in the 

 mineral kingdom, but with rhetorical figures and a 

 more hidden meaning. No other study has de- 

 manded of men such bodily toil and exposure. ~No 

 worldly good but gold, has ever sent men on such 

 long and perilous journeys. It so enchains the mind 

 that ease is forgotten, and money despised except as 



