THE WOXDERS OF THE SHORE. 29 



Stumbling with Hooker upon herds of gigantic 

 "Amnion sheep " amid the rhododendron thickets 

 of the Himalaya : but it cannot be ; and " he is 

 a fool," says old Hesiod, " who knows not how 

 much better half is than the whole." Let us be 

 content with what is within our reach. And 

 doubt not that in these tiny creatures arc myste- 

 ries more than we shall ever fathom. 



The zoophytes and microscopic animalcules 

 which people every shore and every drop of 

 water, have been now raised to a rank in the 

 human mind, more important, perhaps, than 

 even those gigantic monsters, whose models fill 

 the lake at the New Crystal Palace. Tlie re- 

 scarcli which has been bestowed, for the last 

 century, upon these once unnoticed atomies, 

 has well repaid itself; for from no branch of 

 physical science has more been learnt of the 

 scientiu scicnliarum, the priceless art of learn- 

 ing ; no branch of science has more utterly 

 confounded the wisdom of the wise, shattered 

 to pieces systems and theories, and the idolatry 

 of arbitrary names, and tauglit man to be 

 silent while his IMaker speaks, than this ap- 

 parent pedantry of /oopliytology, in which our 

 old distinctions of "animal," "vegetable," and 



