white lily, invest every stream and lonely mere with grace." For our greater power of perceiving, and therefore of enjoying Nature, we are greatly indebted to Science. Over and above what is visible to the unaided eye, the two magic tubes, the telescope and microscope, have revealed to us, at least partially, the infinitely great and the infinitely little. Science, our Fairy Godmother, will, unless we perversely reject her help, and refuse her gifts, so richly endow us, that fewer hours of labour will serve to supply us with the material necessaries of life, leaving us more time to ourselves, more leisure to enjoy all that makes life best worth living. Even now we all have some leisure, and for it we cannot be too grateful. "If any one," says Seneca, "gave you a few acres, you would say that you had received a benefit; can you deny that the boundless extent of the earth is a benefit? If a house were given you, bright with marble, its roof beautifully painted with colours and 1 Howitt's Book of the Seasons. gilding, you would call it no small benefit. God has built for you a mansion that fears no fire or ruin covered with a roof which glitters in one fashion by day, and in another by night. Whence comes the breath which you draw; the light by which you perform the actions of your life? the blood by which your life is maintained? the meat by which your hunger is appeased? . . . The true God has planted, not a few oxen, but all the herds on their pastures throughout the world, and furnished food to all the flocks; he has ordained the alternation of summer and winter . . . he has invented so many arts and varieties of voice, so many notes to make music. We have implanted in us the seeds of all ages, of all arts; and God our Master brings forth our intellects from obscurity."1 1 Seneca, De Beneficiis. If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine. THOMAS À KEMPIS. CHAPTER II ON ANIMAL LIFE THERE is no species of animal or plant which would not well repay, I will not say merely the study of a day, but even the devotion of a lifetime. Their form and structure, development and habits, geographical distribution, relation to other living beings, and past history, constitute an inexhaustible study. When we consider how much we owe to the Dog, Man's faithful friend, to the noble Horse, the patient Ox, the Cow, the Sheep, and our other domestic animals, we cannot be too grateful to them; and if we cannot, like some ancient nations, actually worship them, we have perhaps fallen into the other extreme, underrate the sacredness of animal life, and treat them too much like mere machines. |