VII 

 NATURE IN LITTLE 



NATURA in minimis existat." This saying of 

 Aristotle's is usually translated as if it meant 

 that Nature is seen only, or more fully, in "leasts," 

 whereas it is more probable that Aristotle meant to 

 say that Nature is as complete in the small as the 

 great, that she is whole in all her parts — as much 

 in evidence in the minute as in the gigantic, in the 

 herb as in the oak, in the gnat as in the elephant, 

 in the pond as in the sea. In the. clay-bank washed 

 by rains you may perceive the saine sculpturing and 

 modeling that you see in vast mountain-chains. In 

 California I have seen, in a small mound of clay 

 by the roadside that had been exposed to the 

 weather for a few years, a reproduction in miniature 

 of the range of mountains that towered above it, the 

 Sierra Madre. 



A rivulet winding through a plain loops the same 

 loops and ox-bows that the Mississippi makes trav- 

 ersing the prairie States. The* physical laws at 

 work are the same in both cases. Has not some poet 

 said that the same law that shapes a teardrop shapes 

 a planet? The little whirlwind that dances before 

 you along the road in summer, and maybe snatches 

 your hat from your head, is a miniature cyclone, 

 112 



