STUDIES IN ANIlVLiL LIFE. 55 



when I assure you it is of a species hitherto unde- 

 scribed in text-books ? Now don't be provokingly 

 indifferent ! rouse yourself to a little enthusiasm, 

 and, prove that you have something of the natural- 

 ist in you by delighting in the detection of a new 

 species. "You didn't know that it was new?" 

 That explains your calmness. There must be a 

 basis of knowledge before wonder can be felt — 

 wonder being, as Bacon says, " broken knowledge." 

 Learn, then, that hitherto only three species of 

 fresh- water Polypes have been described: Hydra 

 viridis, Hydra fusca, and Hydra grisea. We have 

 now a fourth to swell the list ; we will christen it 

 Hydra rvbra, and be as modest in our glory as we 

 can. If any one puts it to us whether we seriously 

 attach importance to such trivialities as specific dis- 

 tinctions resting solely upon color or size, we can 

 look profound, you know, and repudiate the charge. 

 But this is a public and official attitude. In pri- 

 vate we can despise the distinctions established by 

 others, but keep a corner of favoritism for our own.* 

 I remember once showing a bottle containing 

 Polypes to a philosopher, who beheld them with 

 great calmness. They appeared to him as insignifi- 



* The editors of the Arniab of Natural History append a note to 

 the account I sent them of this new Polype, from which it appears 

 that Dr. Gray found this very species, and apparently in the same 

 spot, nearly thirty years ago. But the latest work of authority, 

 Van der Hoven's Handbooh of Zoology, only enumerates the three 

 species. 



