uncomprehended? As it seems to you: though in reality it only
seems so, in a world wherein not a sparrow falls to the ground
unnoticed by our Father who is in heaven.

The truth is, the pleasure of finding new species is too great; it
is morally dangerous; for it brings with it the temptation to look
on the thing found as your own possession, all but your own
creation; to pride yourself on it, as if God had not known it for
ages since; even to squabble jealously for the right of having it
named after you, and of being recorded in the Transactions of I-
know-not-what Society as its first discoverer:- as if all the
angels in heaven had not been admiring it, long before you were
born or thought of.

But to be forewarned is to be forearmed; and I seriously counsel
you to try if you cannot find something new this summer along the
coast to which you are going. There is no reason why you should
not be so successful as a friend of mine who, with a very slight
smattering of science, and very desultory research, obtained in one
winter from the Torbay shores three entirely new species, beside
several rare animals which had escaped all naturalists since the
lynx-eye of Colonel Montagu discerned them forty years ago.

And do not despise the creatures because they are minute. No doubt
we should most of us prefer discovering monstrous apes in the
tropical forests of Borneo, or stumbling upon herds of gigantic
Ammon sheep amid the rhododendron thickets of the Himalaya: but it
cannot be; and "he is a fool," says old Hesiod, "who knows not how
much better half is than the whole." Let us be content with what
is within our reach. And doubt not that in these tiny creatures