120 GLAUCUS; OR, 



(for we must push the argiiment a little further,) 

 why have not all the butterflies, at least all who feed 

 on the same plant, the same markings? Of all 

 unfathomable triumphs of design, (we can only ex- 

 press ourselves thus, for honest induction, as Paley 

 so well teaches, allows us to ascribe such results 

 only to the design of some personal will and mind,) 

 what surpasses that by which the scales on a butter- 

 fly's wing are arranged to produce a certain pattern 

 of artistic beauty beyond all painter's skill? What 

 a waste of power, on any utilitarian theory of nature ! 

 And once more, why are those strange microscopic 

 atomies, the Diatomaceae and Infusoria, which fill 

 every stagnant pool; which fringe every branch of 

 sea-weed; which form banks hundreds of miles long 

 on the Arctic sea-floor, and the strata of whole moor- 

 lands ; which pervade in millions the mass of every 

 iceberg, and float aloft in countless swarms amid the 

 clouds of the volcanic dust ; — why are their tiny 

 shells of flint as fantastically various in their quaint 

 mathematical symmetry, as they are countless beyond 

 the wildest dreams of the Poet? Mystery inex- 



