THE WEALTH OF LIFE 
143 
down upon the shelf that holds the fierce nestlings 
screaming over the bloody prey which their mother 
has just laid before them, and commence a descrip¬ 
tion of the golden eagle in the ‘plain didactic 
style’ recommended by those whose frozen heart 
never thaws, whose tuneless throat emits grave and 
measured croaks, but can utter no song of joy and 
love and praise.” 
Of the wealth of life he writes :— 
“From the gigantic elephant that roams among 
the splendid forests of the warmer regions of the 
earth, the unwieldy hippopotamus that plunges 
in the pools and marshes of the African wilds, and 
the timid and graceful giraffe that bounds over the 
sandy desert, down to the little dormouse that we 
find slumbering in its winter retreat, to the lemming 
that in congregated myriads overruns the fields of 
the North, or to the mole that burrows under our 
feet, we find an astonishing variety of beings, 
exhibiting forms, instincts, passions, and pursuits, 
which adapt them for the occupation of every part 
of the globe. The woods, the plains, the 
mountains, and the sands of the sea, are replete 
with life. The waters, too, whether of the ocean 
or of the land, teem with animated beings. 
Scarcely is a particle of matter to be found that 
does not present inhabitants to our view; and a 
drop of ditch-water is a little world in itself, stored 
with inmates of corresponding magnitude.” 1 
Of the fundamental mysteriousness of even the 
commonest things he writes :— 
“In the construction of the familiar fly that 
buzzes through our apartments, not less than in the 
frame of the mighty elephant—in the simple blade 
1 Lives of Eminent Zoologists , 1834, p. 28. 
