The Wonder of the World 9 



Albe they endlesse seem in estimation, 



Than to recount the sea's posterity. 



So fertile be the floods in generation. 



So huge their numbers and so numberless their nation." 



The explorers of the Antarctic seas tell us that 

 from these cold waters it was quite the usual thing 

 to take from ten to thirty thousand specimens of a 

 certain crustacean in a single haul. In short, the 

 naturalist as well as the poet spoke when Goethe 

 celebrated Nature's wealth: "In floods of life, in a 

 storm of activity, she moves and works above and 

 beneath, working and weaving, an endless mo- 

 tion, birth and death, an infinite ocean, a change- 

 ful web, a glowing life; she plies at the roaring 

 loom of time and weaves a living garment for God." 



Immensities. — The simple and open mind is al- 

 ways impressed by the bigness of Nature. Our 

 ancestors were thrilled by the apparently boundless 

 and unfathomable sea, by the apparently unending 

 plains, by the mountains whose tops were lost in 

 the clouds, by the expanse of the heavens; and 

 our children happily have still something of the 

 same impression of the wide, wide world. It is 

 the impression of immensity — of practical infini- 

 tude, and it is worth having and keeping. Nowa- 

 days, of course, we measure everything, and the 

 wonder tends to fade. Every day we get some 

 fresh instance of the way in which "Science reaches 

 forth her arms to feel from world to world, and 



