But people often ask, what is the use of learning all this? If
you do not feel by this time how delightful it is to fill your
mind with beautiful pictures of nature, perhaps it would be
useless to say more. But in this age of ours, when restlessness
and love of excitement pervade so many lives, is it nothing to be
taken out of ourselves and made to look at the wonders of nature
going on around us? Do you never feel tired and "out of sorts,"
and want to creep away from your companions, because they are
merry and you are not? Then is the time to read about the
starts, and how quietly they keep their course from age to age;
or to visit some little flower, and ask what story it has to
tell; or to watch the clouds, and try to imagine how the winds
drive them across the sky. No person is so independent as he who
can find interest in a bare rock, a drop of water, the foam of
the sea, the spider on the wall, the flower underfoot or the
starts overhead. And these interests are open to everyone who
enters the fairy-land of science.

Moreover, we learn from this study to see that there is a law and
purpose in everything in the Universe, and it makes us patient
when we recognize the quiet noiseless working of nature all
around us. Study light, and learn how all colour, beauty, and
life depend on the sun's rays; note the winds and currents of the
air, regular even in their apparent irregularity, as they carry
heat and moisture all over the world. Watch the water flowing in
deep quiet streams, or forming the vast ocean; and then reflect
that every drop is guided by invisible forces working according
to fixed laws. See plants springing up under the sunlight, learn
the secrets of plant life, and how their scents and colours
attract the insects. Read how insects cannot live without