viil Preface 



Readers of more mature years can hardly fail to 

 find in this volume some facts that are new to them, 

 some suggestions of a wider interpretation of nature 

 or of a more accurate perception of its inter-relations, 

 or some fresh cause for intelligent wonder. If Newton 

 could look on himself as a boy playing with pebbles 

 on the shore of the great unexplored ocean of truth, 

 every student of nature may well recognise that, what- 

 ever his years, his experience or his learning, he will 

 remain but a student, and will never have learnt all 

 that nature has to teach. 



In looking upon nature as a great farm, there is, 

 however, another and a more important lesson than 

 any teaching of accuracy or of admiration. We read 

 of steam-ploughs, of hoeing-machines and mechanical 

 sowing, reaping and threshing machines ; but, though 

 much labour may be replaced by automatic processes, 

 the controlling intelligence of the farmer co-ordinates 

 all the operations of the farm to his one end. It is 

 wisely said that 



' The undevout astronomer is mad, 



and Napoleon's tribute to the Higher Power, when he 

 asked the sceptical members of his staff ' Who made 

 all these ?' is only the natural testimony of intelligence. 

 Truly those minds are to be pitied that fail to see 

 more than the blind operation of mechanical forces 

 even in the simplest of natural phenomena ; but when 

 these phenomena are studied separately, there is 

 undoubtedly a danger that we may 'fail to see the 

 wood for the trees.' When, however, we contemplate 

 the marvellous co-ordination of all the forces of nature, 

 the balance of vegetable and animal life and their 

 mutual dependence, we must be blind indeed if we 

 refuse to look ' thro* Nature up to Nature's God.' 



