30 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



could have built it, grown it, for the laminated 

 pile had required for its growth the patience and 

 painstaking care of a process of nature, as if it 

 were a kind of printed coral reef. Agassiz do this *? 

 The big, human, magnetic man at work upon 

 these pages of capital letters, Roman figures, 

 brackets, and parentheses in explanation of the 

 pages of diagrams and plates ! I turned away with 

 a sigh from the weary learning, to read the pre- 

 face. 



When a great man writes a great book he usu- 

 ally flings a preface after it, and thereby saves it, 

 sometimes, from oblivion. Whether so or not, the 

 best things in most books are their prefaces. It 

 was not, however, the quality of the preface to 

 these great volumes that interested me, but rather 

 the wicked waste of durable book-material that 

 went to its making. Reading down through the 

 catalogue of human names and of thanks for help 

 received, I came to a sentence beginning : 



"In New England I have myself collected 

 largely ; but I have also received valuable con- 

 tributions from the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson 

 of Burlington; . . . from Mr. D. Henry Thoreau 

 of Concord; ... and from Mr. J. W. P. Jenks 



