DELIGHTS OF SCIENCE. 43 



iiieiit ; my finale was not final. If, as a matter of fact, the 

 dissecting-table was the scene on which my captures made a 

 last appearance, this last appearance was the end of a long 

 series of episodes intermediate between the capture of prey 

 and the incision of the scalpel. And even this finale was 

 not, strictly speaking, a finis ; for when the last shred of 

 delicate tissue had been examined under the Microscope, 

 when various parts of the animal had been made into " pre- 

 parations " for after-study, when everything to the physical 

 eye may have seemed concluded, no end was reached, no 

 dead wall of terminal blankness ; on the contrary, the meta- 

 physical eye followed the devious paths of speculation, into 

 which new facts conducted ; and thus the feast of reason and 

 the flow of physiology, generated pleasures superior to the 

 pleasures of the ordinary hunter by quite transcendent 

 degrees. I dined as well as Brown, thanks to my poulterer 

 and fishmonger. If the truth were known, my game was 

 perhaps better than his. We both dined, 



" But oh ! the difference to me ! " 



On an equality as regards mere plenitude and digestive 

 beatitude, how far below the " reaches of my soul ' were any 

 thoughts which he could extricate from under that oppres- 

 sion of venison ! 



Table for Tcible, then, finale for finale, it is clear that my 

 hunting was superior to Brown's in having a grand climax ; 

 but I had already distanced him by many lengths before we 

 came to that winning-post of the table. Brown lands his 

 pike, and carries it home with a careless ostentation, and an 

 "Oh-I- could -have-caught -more" kind of air. Admiring 



