Sma] AND SYMBOLS. 323 



The Day of Small Things. 



When the day of small things is being smiled at, the ques- 

 tion may be advantageously asked, Whether the small things 

 are the germs of the great, or are preparing the way for them 1 

 In an immense number of instances in the political, the moral, 

 and the material world, it will be found that the "little" things 

 have been marvellously potential ; vigorous in themselves, 

 though in their day appearing weak ; tremendous in their results, 

 though originally indicating no future force. The thallogens 

 are, many of them, of minute microscopic dimensions. Never- 

 theless they fulfil an important part in the economy of Nature. 

 They constituted the first origin, and were even the source of all 

 vegetation. Disaggregating rocks, they produced the vegetable 

 earth which became the means of their own destruction. The 

 enriched soil nourished plants of more complex organisation, 

 and these inferior beings were replaced by degrees by vegetable 

 species of more perfect structure. All soil primitively sterile, 

 all land recently emerged from the bosom of the waters, served 

 first as the asylum of crustaceous and foliaceous lichens ; at a 

 later period lichens and ferns made their appearance there ; 

 finally a superior vegetation, namely, the phanerogames, or 

 cotyledons, present themselves. Thus the higher orders of 

 vegetables have only appeared, and will only continue to make 

 their appearance, upon the debris of vegetation of a lower order. 



v. 



Paltry Battles of Small Natures, i 



The common stickleback, or tittlebat, as it is sometimes 

 called, is a most irritable and pugnacious creature. Sometimes 

 a rival male comes by with all his swords drawn ready for 

 battle, and his colours of red and green flying. Then there is 

 a fight that would require the pen of Homer to describe. These 

 valiant warriors dart at each other, they bite, they manoeuvre, 

 they strike with their spines, and sometimes a well-aimed cut 

 will rip up the body of the adversary and send him to the 

 bottom dead. When one of the combatants prefers ignominious 

 flight to a glorious death, he is pursued by the victor with re- 



