amply fulfilled.

The study of natural history indeed seems destined to replace the loss of
what is, not very happily I think, termed "sport;" engraven in us as it is
by the operation of thousands of years, during which man lived greatly on
the produce of the chase. Game is gradually becoming "small by degrees and
beautifully less." Our prehistoric ancestors hunted the mammoth, the
woolly-haired rhinoceros, and Irish elk; the ancient Britons had the wild
ox, the deer, and the wolf. We have still the pheasant, the partridge, the
fox, and the hare; but even these are becoming scarcer, and must be
preserved first, in order that they may be killed afterwards. Some of us
even now--and more, no doubt, will hereafter--satisfy instincts,
essentially of the same origin, by the study of birds, or insects, or even
infusoria--of creatures which more than make up by their variety what they
want in size.

Emerson avers that when a naturalist has "got all snakes and lizards in
his phials, science has done for him also, and has put the man into a
bottle." I do not deny that there are such cases, but they are quite
exceptional. The true naturalist is no mere dry collector.

I cannot resist, although it is rather long, quoting the following
description from Hudson and Gosse's beautiful work on the Rotifera:--

"On the Somersetshire side of the Avon, and not far from Clifton, is a
little combe, at the bottom of which lies an old fish-pond. Its slopes are
covered with plantations of beech and fir, so as to shelter the pond on
three sides, and yet leave it open to the soft south-western breezes, and
to the afternoon sun. At the head of the combe wells up a clear spring,
which sends a thread of water, trickling through a bed of osiers, into the