HIDDEN BEAUTIES OF NATURE 



CHAPTER I 



On the Study of Nature 



THE advanced student, and those who require 

 learned books on animal and plant life, will 

 find nothing in these chapters sufficiently deep for 

 them. But the young beginner who has no particular 

 hobby may be induced to find one among the marvels 

 here noticed. The young people of the present 

 generation have facilities and opportunities of ac- 

 quiring useful information which never fell to the lot 

 of their grandfathers, yet the temptations to remain 

 ignorant or to go wrong are very great and very 

 numerous. Therefore it behoves us all to so employ 

 our minds that they may be led to think in the 

 right direction ; and so train our eyes that they may 

 see what ought to be seen. The following pages 

 have been written with this aim in view, and are 

 especially addressed to young people. 



Puzzling definitions, difficult classifications, and 

 many-syllabled names are to many readers, and 

 especially boys and girls, like so many notice-boards, 



