XX NATURE-STUDY. 



vanity and excited the envy of other scientific men, but 

 it would never have aroused the v^^ide-spread interest in 

 the Rhizopods that it did arouse. But bless the man, 

 he had his pupils in mind and he wrote one of the most 

 satisfactory, the simplest, and one of the best scientific 

 books that has ever been composed in the English lan- 

 guage. I found my first Rhizopod many years ago. 

 It was a beautiful thing, with a delicate something 

 around it. I could not decide what, but it was so 

 daintily sculptured in microscopical hexagons, so charm- 

 ingly tinted, that I felt that it must be the rarest gem 

 from one of nature's rarest mines, although I had 

 taken it from a meadow ditch. I am willing that you 

 should laugh at my ignorance, but that Rliizopod was 

 so beautiful, that I tried to cultivate it so as to have a 

 supply, and to discover, if possible, what it could be, for 

 I could not guess. As I had captured it in a ditch, I 

 attempted to cultivate it in water, and I waited and 

 watched, and got up in the night to see what it was 

 doing, but at the end of my patient waiting, it remained 

 what I have since learned it all the time was, only a dead 

 and empty shell, but beautiful, dainty and graceful, a 

 common Arcella, such as abound by the hundred in the 

 nearest ditch. It was not until I had read Dr. Leidy's 

 entrancing monograph on the Rhizopods long after I had 

 abandoned my investigations, that I learned what I had. 

 Do you suppose that I now fail to recognize a Rhizopod 

 when one comes in the field of my microscope? As a 

 teacher and lecturer I try to have my pupils in mind, for 

 I recollect how I groped, and faltered, and how blind I 

 was, with not a human being to help nor to encourage, 

 but many to say, "What nonsense! It is no good. L,et 

 me look ! Pshaw ! It looks exactly like the kitchen oil- 



