to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, but akin. The Life that stirs within us stirs within them. We are all "parts of one transcendent whole." The scales fall from our eyes when we think of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us, and we learn to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love.

Life every where! The air is crowded with birds -beautiful, tender, intelligent birds-to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects-those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures, and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets.

Life every where! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Omnipresence of Life.-The Microscope.—An Opalina and its Wonders.-The Uses of Cilia.-How our Lungs are protected from Dust and Filings.-Feeding without a Mouth or Stomach. -What is an Organ?-How a complex Organism arises.— Early Stages of a Frog and a Philosopher.-How the Plants feed.-Parasites of the Frog.-Metamorphoses and Migrations of Parasites.-Life within Life.-The budding of Animals.— -A steady Bore.-Philosophy of the infinitely little ..... Page 9

CHAPTER II.

Ponds and Rock-pools. Our necessary Tackle.- Wimbledon Common.- Early Memories.- Gnat Larvæ.-Entomostraca and their Paradoxes.-Races of Animals dispensing with the sterner Sex.-Insignificance of Males.-Volvox Globator: is it an Animal?-Plants swimming like Animals.-Animal Retrogressions. The Dytiscus and its Larva.—The Dragon-fly Larva.-Mollusks and their Eggs.-Polypes, and how to find them. -A new Polype, Hydra rubra.-Nest-building Fish.-Contempt replaced by Reverence

CHAPTER III.

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39

A garden Wall, and its Traces of past Life.-Not a Breath perishes.-A Bit of dry Moss and its Inhabitants.-The "Wheelbearers." - Resuscitation of Rotifers: drowned into Life.Current Belief that Animals can be revived after complete Desiccation.-Experiments contradicting the Belief.—Spallanzani's Testimony.-Value of Biology as a Means of Culture.-Classification of Animals: the five great Types.-Criticism of Cuvier's Arrangement........

59

CHAPTER IV.

An extinct Animal recognized by its Tooth: how came this to be possible?-The Task of Classification.-Artificial and natural Methods.-Linnæus, and his Baptism of the Animal Kingdom: his Scheme of Classification.-What is there underlying all true Classification ?-The chief Groups.-What is a Species ?Restatement of the Question respecting the Fixity or Variability of Species.-The two Hypotheses.-Illustration drawn from the Romance Languages.-Caution to Disputants............ Page 86

CHAPTER V.

Talking in Beetles.-Identity of Egyptian Animals with those now existing: Does this prove Fixity of Species ?-Examination of the celebrated Argument of Species not having altered in four thousand Years.-Impossibility of distinguishing Species from Varieties.-The Affinities of Animals.-New Facts proving the Fertility of Hybrids.-The Hare and the Rabbit contrasted.-Doubts respecting the Development Hypothesis.-On Hypothesis in Natural History.-Pliny, and his Notion on the Formation of Pearls.-Are Pearls owing to a Disease of the Oyster ?— Formation of the Shell; Origin of Pearls.-How the Chinese manufacture Pearls....

CHAPTER VI.

107

Every Organism a Colony.-What is a Paradox ?—An Organ is an independent Individual and a dependent one.-A Branch of Coral.-A Colony of Polypes.-The Siphonophora.—Universal Dependence.-Youthful Aspirings.-Our Interest in the Youth of great Men.-Genius and Labor.—Cuvier's College Life; his Appearance in Youth; his Arrival in Paris.—Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire.-Causes of Cuvier's Success.-One of his early Ambitions.-M. le Baron.-Omnia vincit labor.-Conclusion........

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STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

Omnipresence of Life.—The Microscope.—An Opalina and its Wonders.-The Uses of Cilia.-How our Lungs are protected from Dust and Filings.-Feeding without a Mouth or Stomach. -What is an Organ?-How a complex Organism arises.Early Stages of a Frog and a Philosopher.-How the Plants feed.-Parasites of the Frog.-Metamorphoses and Migrations of Parasites.-Life within Life.-The budding of Animals.-A steady Bore.-Philosophy of the infinitely little.

COME with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms of Life—forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams, along the tawny coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery ledges. It matters little where we go: every where-in the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth-we are surrounded with Life. Avert your eyes a while from our human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of conscious imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contem