42 BIKDS AND POETS 



rial, not expressed by exhaustless. Did you think 

 Niagara a great exhibition of power ? What is that, 

 then, that withdraws noiseless and invisible in the 

 ground about, and of which Niagara is but the lift- 

 ing of the finger ? 



Nature is thoroughly selfish, and looks only to 

 her own ends. One thing she is bent upon, and 

 that is keeping up the supply, multiplying endlessly 

 and scattering as she multiplies. Did Nature have 

 in view our delectation when she made the apple, 

 the peach, the plum, the cherry, etc. ? Undoubt- 

 edly; but only as a means to her own private ends. 

 "What a bribe or a wage is the pulp of these delica- 

 cies to all creatures to come and sow their seed ! 

 And Nature has taken care to make the seed indi- 

 gestible, so that, though the fruit be eaten, the germ 

 is not, but only planted. 



God made the crab, but man made the pippin; 

 but the pippin cannot propagate itself, and exists 

 only by violence and usurpation. Bacon says, "It 

 is easier to deceive Nature than to force her," but 

 it seems to me the nurserymen really force her. 

 They cut off the head of a savage and clap on the 

 head of a fine gentleman, and the crab becomes a 

 Swaar or a Baldwin. Or is it a kind of deception 

 practiced upon Nature, which succeeds only by be- 

 ing carefully concealed 1 If we could play the same 

 tricks upon her in the human species, how the great 

 geniuses could be preserved and propagated, and the 

 world stocked with them! But what a frightful 

 condition of things that would be ! No new men, 



