Lect. IV.] MOTHEll CAREY. 119 



u homely illustration in the inimitable Water Babies of Charles 

 Kingsley. With fine instinct, Kingsley caught the genuine spirit of 

 modern Biology, and rightly judged that children should be indoc- 

 trinated with it. One short quotation will serve our purpose here. 

 Tom, the Water Baby, comes to Mother Carey's shrine (Mother 

 Carey, we need hardly remind the reader, is the name — not a very 

 dignified one, it must be owned — applied by our poet to Dame 

 IS^ature). The little man approaches with awe and wonderment, 

 i^.xpecting, of course (like some grown people who ought to know 

 better), to find Dame Nature "snipping, piecing, fitting, cobbling, 

 basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing, moulding, 

 measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go 

 to work to make anything. But, instead of that, he finds her sitting 

 quite still, with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea 

 with two great, grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair 

 was as white as snow — for she was very old — in fact, as old as any- 

 thing which you are likely to come across, except the diiference 

 between right and wrong." 



" I heard, ma'am," says Tom, " that you were always making new 

 beasts out of old." 



" So people fancy. But I am not going to trouble myself to make 

 things, my little dear. I sit here and maTve them malie themselves^ 

 To return from this digression. Between the morj)hological force 

 within, and the forces of nature in the external surroundings, there is, 

 if one may so speak, a balance struck. Thus, everywhere in nature, 

 all things are double ; one thing' is set over against another ; and 

 forces, apparently antithetical an<l antagonistic, in and by their very 

 struggle, produce the most exquisite and perfect results. 



In the Edentata no perfection of sjoecial modification redeems them 

 from mammalian lowliness ; they are the slow, dull, heavy-gaited 

 churls of the class to which they belong, whilst the sharp-eyed 

 cat, and her sharper o^vner, are two of the highest and most perfect 

 forms in the class. What is it that lies at the root of this diiference ? 

 I answer, the relative development of the central nervous system 

 — the organ of the mind. A similar difi'erence to that which we 

 note between the Edentata on the one hand, and the boy and his 

 cat on the other, also exists between these two tyx)es of the higher 

 ]\[ammals, of which the singing bird is always in fear — namely. 



