ON HABITS OF OBSERVING. 17 



or not. Many persons also have found their chief 

 happiness in a habit of observing the life and man- 

 ners of the animals in their immediate neighbour- 

 hood, without any view to the facts so acquired 

 being made subservient to the progress of Zoology. 

 We would throw no hindrance or discouragement 

 in the way of such observers. We desire not to say 

 anything that might tend to check their inquiries, 

 though no benefit were thereby to accrue to the 

 higher departments of the science. For we are 

 deeply sensible ourselves of the pleasure which 

 attends an observing habit of mind, as well as its 

 usefulness in other ways, besides its bearing upon 

 the general objects of science. WTien a man has 

 learnt to take an interest in the varied operations 

 of Nature, which are everywhere being carried on 

 about him, and has acquired the habit of directing 

 his attention to such matters, and keeping his senses 

 always alive to any new information thereby afforded 

 him, he has made himself almost independent of 

 outward circumstances. He has opened to himself 

 a source of occupation and mental enjoyment, but 

 little affected by the ordinary vicissitudes of life. 

 Of how few of the pursuits of the world in general 

 can this be advanced ! How few can secure those 



latitude, the air is peopled with new inhabitants, and in a zone 

 where the barometer becomes a clock (by the extreme regularity 

 of the horary variations of the atmospheric pressure), where every- 

 thing .proceeds with such admirable regularity, we might guess 

 blindfold the hour of the day or night, by the hum of the insects, 

 and by their stings, the pain of which differs according to the 

 nature of the poison that each insect deposits in the wound." 

 Pers. Narr. (Engl. Transl.) vol. v. p. 95. 



