A BIRD OF PASSAGE 



England field is with drift boulders. That life has 

 touched and tarried here and there upon them can 

 hardly be doubted, but if it is anything more than 

 a passing incident, an infant crying in the night, a 

 flush of color upon the cheek, a flower blooming by 

 the wayside, appearances are against it. 



We read our astronomy and geology in the light 

 of our enormous egotism, and appropriate all to our- 

 selves; but science sees in our appearance here a no 

 more significant event than in the foam and bubbles 

 that whirl and dance for a moment upon the river's 

 current. The bubbles have their reason for being; 

 all the mysteries of molecular attraction and repul- 

 sion may be involved in their production; without 

 the solar energy, and the revolution of the earth 

 upon its axis, they would not appear; and yet they 

 are only bubbles upon the river's current, as we are 

 bubbles upon the stream of energy that flows through 

 the universe. Apparently the cosmic game is played 

 for us no more than for the parasites that infest our 

 bodies, or for the frost ferns that form upon our win- 

 dow-panes in winter. The making of suns and sys- 

 tems goes on in the depths of space, and doubtless 

 will go on to all eternity, without any more refer- 

 ence to the vital order than to the chemical com- 

 pounds. 



The amount of living matter in the universe, so 

 far as we can penetrate it, compared with the 

 non-living, is, in amount, like a flurry of snow that 



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