Correspondents and Critics. 293 



where unquestionably wrong. We can have 

 abundant faith in ourselves without losing faith 

 in others, and we wrong ourselves when we let 

 others lead us wheresoever we go, as if blind 

 from birth. Our eyes and ears were not in- 

 tended solely for a few purely personal con- 

 siderations. We dwarf our powers when we 

 survey a parlor or a kitchen but never the land- 

 scape, as we do, also, when we discourse learn- 

 edly over the merits, as food, of Delaware shad 

 or trout of the mountain brook, yet never see a 

 silvery minnow in the muddy mill-pond. There 

 is not a person living, perhaps, who will not 

 claim to know a minnow when he sees it, but 

 you will look in vain through the entire range 

 of ichthyological literature for information as to 

 just when and where these same little minnows 

 lay their eggs. We are as ignorant to-day of 

 the habits of our most widely spread species as 

 was the Delaware Valley's palaeolithic man of 

 X-rays. 



Thoreau records that he felt better acquainted 

 with a pretty purple grass when he learned its 

 scientific name. Before then it stood aloof; 

 something separate and apart from the sur- 



