3G4 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



test of merit, estimate their fellows according to 

 what they have and not according to what they 

 are, and who would heap contempt upon virtue, 

 and genius in poverty, while they would lick the 

 dust from the feet of vice and charlatanry clothed 

 in purple. 



Certainly, so far as individuals are concerned, 

 this inordinate greed of gold brings its own pun- 

 ishment with it. The unsatisfied desire still 

 haunts the mind of the man who has accumulated 

 his hundreds of thousands as incessantly as when 

 the first savings of his early life were frugally 

 laid b}', and constituted the foundation of his 

 subsequent fortune. The leisure he promised 

 himself has never arrived, the enjoyments he 

 anticipated are destitute of the promised relish, 

 or he has lost the capacity to appreciate it. 



Inveterate habits choke the unfruitful heart, 

 Their fibres penetrate its tenderest part, 

 And, draining its nutritious powers to feed 

 Their noxious growth, starve every better seed. 



Usually, too, the man who makes cash the 

 stepping-stone from one grade of society to 

 another, pays something like " a penalty " for his 

 admission into a higher rank. The artisan who 

 has elevated himself to the position of an em- 

 ployer of labor, experiences among his new 

 associates the embarrassing restraints imposed 

 upon him by the rude habitudes and imperfect 

 education of his early life. The tradesman whose 

 extended and extending dealings enable him to 

 take rank with merchants, enters upon an estab- 

 lishment and an expenditure incongruous with 

 his antecedents, and out of harmony with the 

 settled peculiarities of his character; while the 

 wealthy merchant who contrives to shoulder his 

 way among the aristocracy, is only tolerated by 

 courtesy, and, if occasion demands it, snubbed as 

 a parvenu. 



A feeling of pride, however, conceals all these 

 mortifications from the public eye. The gaping 

 crowd is dazzled by the glittering trappings which 

 wealth is enabled to assume, extols the success 

 which has so many splendid accessories, and 

 presses forward in pursuit of the same alluring 

 prize. And thus the avenues to riches are choked 

 with ardent and eager competitors, who are kept 

 in countenance by the very magnitude of their 

 number, and who establish a new law to set up 

 for worship a false god, which, disguise it as they 

 may, entirely alienates their affections from the 

 True One. 



The only god an Englishman owes thorough 

 allegiance to is, — Mammon. It were idle to deny 

 what is so palpable a fact. 



THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE KINGDOMS. 

 A COMPARISON. 



At a late meeting of the members of 

 the Royal Institution, Dr. Edwin Lankester 

 delivered a very interestingLecture; its object 

 being, — to explain and define the differences 

 and the limits of the two classes of material 

 beings, — Plants and Animals. 



An easy task this, many will feel inclined 

 to exclaim ; but, if considered somewhat more 



closely, it will probably appear to be one that 

 most men are incapable of, and with which 

 the most capable would be the last to attempt 

 to meddle, — but for the utility of a well-drawn 

 and defined line of demarcation between the 

 two kingdoms, in furthering the pursuits of 

 the naturalist. 



Who has not met with men observant, 

 sensible, and even fairly educated, who have 

 held with a most undoubting faitli that stones 

 and metals grow in the earth ? This growth, 

 as a general rule, is in their minds as appli- 

 cable to a flint pebble, as to a crystal of sele- 

 nite in the London clay; or to a dog's tooth 

 spar in cavities and fissures penetrable by 

 calcareous waters ; their meaning by the term 

 growth being the same in both cases, viz., an 

 increase of bulk and weight by the accretion 

 of matter. 



Now, that this notion is of very ancient 

 standing, is readily proved by reference to 

 the writings of the earlier students of nature, 

 to whom we moderns owe so much, and 

 at length begin to have the grace given us to 

 acknowledge the debt. These men were 

 accurate and patient observers in the main, 

 and real lovers of nature and of truth, yet of 

 warm and imaginative temperaments ; which, 

 bounded by no laws nor inductive system, 

 revelled in hypothesis and fancy till their 

 creations asserted a powerful mastery over 

 them ; and thus every fact and every dis- 

 covery, was twisted and tortured into the 

 support of their visions. 



Even when we come to comparatively 

 modern times, w r e find something of this 

 notion prevailing ; since Linnseus himself 

 speaks of the growth of minerals. The 

 Swedish naturalist, like some of his prede- 

 cessors, tried his hand at defining, for syste- 

 matic purposes, animals, plants, and minerals. 

 Thus he says, — Minerals grow, Plants grow 

 and live, Animals grow, live, and feel. But 

 attempt to apply this definition — having first 

 affixed definite ideas to the distinguishing 

 terms. Growth means simply increase. Life 

 cannot be so defined as to separate some phy- 

 sical phenomena of the inorganic world from 

 those of the lowest organic forms. Feeling is 

 common to animal and vegetable ; since ex- 

 ternal stimulants in each case produce move- 

 ment, which is apparently identical in the 

 sensitive plant, the catch-fly, the stamens of 

 the barberry and numerous zoophytes — all of 

 which, be it the plant or the animal, shrink 

 and move at the touch. Such distinctions, 

 then, unaided by the microscope, are impedi- 

 ments, not helps, to systematic arrangement 

 and accurate definition. 



Let us turn then to the microscope, that 

 marvellous instrument which has but just 

 begun to open up new fields of philosophic 

 research, and to exercise its due influence on 

 Natural Science, — especially on those branches 



