STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 69 



CHAPTER HI. 



A garden Wall, and its Traces of past Life. Not a Breath per- 

 ishes. A Bit of dry Moss and its Inhabitants. The "Wheel- 

 bearers." Resuscitation of Rotifers: drowned into Life. 

 Current Belief that Animals can be revived after complete De- 

 siccation. Experiments contradicting the Belief. Spallanzani's 

 Testimony. Value of Biology as a Means of Culture. Classi- 

 fication of Animals : the five great Types. Criticism of Cu- 

 vier's Arrangement. 



PLEASANT, both to eye and mind, is an old gar- 

 den wall, dark with age, gray with lichens, green 

 with mosses* of beautiful hues and fairy elegance of 

 form ; a wall shutting in some sequestered home, 

 far from "the din of murmurous cities vast;" a 

 home where, as we fondly, foolishly think, Life 

 must needs throb placidly,. and all its tragedies and 

 pettinesses be unknown. As we pass alongside this 

 wall, the sight of the overhanging branches sug- 

 gests an image of some charming nook; or our 

 thoughts wander about the wall itself, calling up 

 the years during which it has been warmed by the 

 sun, chilled by the night airs and the dews, and 

 dashed against by the wild winds of March, all of 

 which have made it quite another wall from what 

 it was when the trowel first settled its bricks. The 

 old wall has a past, a life, a story ; as Wordsworth 



