132 
Transactions of the Society. 
scarcely to be dealt with successfully by human faculties, but in a 
condition to be discussed with infinite relish. 
When I speak, then, of the pleasure we derive from the study of 
natural history, I include these graver and higher pleasures in the 
word. 
Here and there, too, no doubt, the knowledge of the powers and 
habits of animals is materially useful to us ; and, indeed, in the case 
of some of the minuter organisms may be of terrible importance ; but 
in that of the large majority of creatures we might go out of the 
world unconscious of their existence (as indeed very many people do), 
and yet, unlike the little jackdaw, not be a penny the worse.” For 
what is a man the better for studying butterflies, unless he is delighted 
with their beauty, their structure, and their transformations ? Why 
should he learn anything about wasps and ants, unless their ways 
give him a thrill of pleasure ? What can the living plumes of the 
rock zoophytes do for us, but witch our eyes with their loveliness, or 
entrance us with the sight of their tiny fleets of medusa-buds, watery 
ghostlets, flitting away laden with the fate of future generations ? 
When, at dusk, we steal into the woods to hear the nightingale or 
w^atch the nightjar, what more do we hope for than to delight our 
ears with the notes of the one, or our eyes with the flight of the 
other ? When the Microscope dazzles us with the sight of a world 
whose inhabitants and their doings surpass the wildest flights of 
nightmare or fairy tale, do we speculate on what possible service this 
strange creation may render us ? Do we give a thought to the 
ponderous polysyllables that these mites bear in our upper world, or to 
their formal marshalling into ranks and companies which are ever 
being pulled to pieces, to be again rearranged ? No ! it is the living 
creature itself which chains us to the magic tube. For there we see 
that the dream of worlds peopled with unimagined forms of life, with 
entient beings whose ways are a mystery, and whose thoughts we 
cannot even guess at, is a reality that lies at our very feet ; that the 
air we breathe, the dust that plagues our nostrils, the water we fear 
to drink, teem with forms more amazing than any with which our 
fancy has peopled the distant stars ; and that the actions of some of 
the humblest arouse in us the bewildering suspicion, that even in these 
invisible specks there is a faint foreboding of our own dual nature. 
If, then, we make some few exceptions, we are entitled to say that 
the study of natural history depends for its existence on the pleasure 
that it gives, and the curiosity that it excites and gratifies ; and yet, if 
this be so, see how cruelly we often treat it. Bound its fair domain 
we try to draw a triple rampart of uncouth words, elaborate yet ever- 
changing classifications, and exasperatingly minute subdivisions, and 
we place these difficulties in the path of those whose advantages are 
the least, those who have neither the vigorous tastes that enable them 
to clear such ’obstacles at a bound, nor the homes whose fortunate 
position enables them to slip round them. For modern town-life 
