TO SANTA ROSIA AND SANTA MARIA 123 



is like the loveliness of the orchid, — evanescent 

 and fleeting. Unless killed and expanded with 

 greatest care the graceful body shrinks into shape- 

 less distortion in alcohol or formalin and even at 

 best the glorious colors soon fade. The poor little 

 creature, bereft of its soul of beauty, presents a 

 pitiful object for study when finally placed in its 

 graveyard of bottles upon some museum shelf. 

 It seems useless, however, to comment upon the 

 beauty of any one particular object of nature that 

 happens to fall into our nets. That which we con- 

 sider beautiful is the approximation of some form 

 or color accepted in our narrow range of obser- 

 vation as pleasing. The truth is that all living 

 things possess a beauty that is almost perfection, 

 our own personal judgment being a matter of 

 education. The dullest hued and most incon- 

 spicuous creatures when studied are transformed 

 into objects of superlative beauty. Even the de- 

 spised cockroach and the common edible crab of 

 Long Island Sound are perfect creatures in their 

 own way and wonderfully beautiful. We have a 

 natural abhorrence for worms, because we instinc- 

 tively dislike anything that progresses in an un- 

 dulatory motion. It suggests snakes, and snakes 



