282 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Pre 



witness to anomalies of deference quite as extraordinary as the 

 peculiar courtesy and awe exhibited by these vultures one to- 

 wards the other. MU. 



The Tenacity of Prejudices. 



Prejudices form a large family in the continent of ideas. 

 Their tenacity of life is marvellous. They resemble the sea- 

 worm, the white water-worm, and those little worms with 

 feelers which are found at the bottom of dirty ditches. In all 

 these the nobler organs are of such little use that if taken away 

 the animal does not seem to feel the want of them ; it lives in 

 all its parts, and in every part, and by a strange paradox in 

 Kature, the most useless and contemptible life is of all others 

 the most difficult to destroy. A. 



Preparatory Intellectual Processes. 



It frequently happens that the very insects which we most 

 admire, which are decorated with the most brilliant colours, and 

 which soar on the most ethereal wings, have passed the greater 

 portion of their lives as burrowers beneath the surface of the 

 earth. The well-known Mayfly or ephemera, so delicate in its 

 gauzy wings, so marvellous in its muscular power, which enables 

 the new-born being to disport itself in the air for a period 

 which, in comparison with our own lives, is equal to at least 

 forty years, and passing the greater portion of its terrestrial 

 existence as an inhabitant of the air has spent a life of some 

 three years or more hidden from human gaze. Let this fact 

 remind young people who are impatiently anxious to soar high 

 in the world's notice, that there are preparatory processes 

 necessary for aerial spirits. The orator sustains the flight of 

 his eloquence all the better, and the figures of his rhetoric 

 are all the brighter, because he spends the first portion of his 

 life burrowing in the useful obscurity of a library. Away from 

 all* distractions, in the seclusion of reading and meditation, he 

 acquires the intellectual powers which enable him to rise to his 

 proper sphere. H. 



