PBEFACE. 



THESE essays deal for the most part with Science in 

 Arcady. 'Tis rny native country : for I am not of those 

 who ' praise the busy town.' On the contrary, in the 

 words of the great poet who has just departed to join 

 Milton and Shelley in a place of high collateral glory, I 

 ' love to rail against it still,' with a naturalist's bitterness. 

 For the town is always dead and lifeless. There are who 

 admire it, they say poor purblind creatures because, 

 forsooth, ' there is so much life there.' So much life, 

 indeed ! No grass in the streets ; no flowers in the lanes ; 

 no beetles or butterflies on the dull stone pavements ! 

 Brick and mortar have killed out all life over square 

 miles of Middlesex. For myself, I love better the densely- 

 peopled fields than this human desert, this beflagged and 

 macadamised man-made solitude. The country teems 

 with life on every hand ; a thousand different plants and 

 flowers in the spangled meadows ; a thousand varied 

 denizens of pond, and air, and heath, and copses. Their 



