6 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



evidently cost liim in tlie collecting the spare liours 

 of many busy years, and many a pound, too, out of 

 his small salary, were you not a little puzzled to 

 make out what spell there could be in those "use- 

 less " moths, to draw out of his warm bed, twenty 

 miles down the Eastern Counties Eailway, and into 

 the damp forest like a deer-stealer, a sober white- 

 headed Tim Linkinwater like him, your very best 

 man of business, given to the reading of Scotch 

 political economy, and gifted with peculiarly clear 

 notions on the currency question? 



It is puzzling, truly. I shall be very glad if these 

 pages help you somewhat toward solving the puzzle. 



We shall agree at least that the study of N'atural 

 History has become now-a-days an honourable one. 

 A Cromarty stonemason was till lately — God rest 

 his noble soul! — the most important man in the 

 City of Edinburgh, by dint of a work on fossil 

 fishes ; and the successful investigator of the 

 minutest animals takes place unquestioned among 

 men of genius, and, like the philosopher of old 

 Greece, is considered, by virtue of his science, fit 



