ADVANTAGES OF ABUNDANCE. 145 



the significance which lies in an unstinted, noble, jirodigal 

 abundance. Books, for example : can we have too many of 

 them, provided they be well selected ? Dogs : can they be 

 too populous in our grounds? or horses — in our stables? 

 or friends — at convenient distances? or children — in the 

 nursery? or creditors — no, not creditors, unless gathered 

 together in a general cataclysm. In a word, is not abun- 

 dance in and for itself a grand advantage ? Painfully the 

 truth obtrudes itself upon me as I sit eyeing the solitary 

 Anemone which mopes in a single vase upon my table, the 

 last rose of summer, all its blooming companions dissected 

 and dead. My thoughts take wing to Ilfracombe and Tenby, 

 where foot-pans, pie-dishes, soup-plates, and vases, were 

 crowded with specimens of every variety of form and colour. 

 I think of that paradisaic abundance, and sigh over this one 

 unhappy animal — the mere Mesopotamian pennyworth — 

 partly because I love plenteousness in all things, but 

 mainly because it is only with abundant specimens at com- 

 mand that Nature can be properly interrogated. Fortu- 

 nately I made good use of my specimens, but not so much as 

 I could make now ; and from my notes I will select a few 

 points for the student's consideration ; but as they will refer 

 solely to questions of anatomy and physiology, the reader is 

 advised to skip the chaj)ter, unless he feel some interest in 

 such questions. 



Perhaps nothing has excited more surprise on the part of 

 the public, and nothing has been more unanimously believed 

 by anatomists, than the hypothesis that certain minute 



organs found in all Polypes, and variously styled thread- 



N 



