unambitious it is. The beauty there is in mosses must be considered from
the holiest, quietest nook. What an admirable training is science for the
more active warfare of life. Indeed, the unchallenged bravery, which these
studies imply, is far more impressive than the trumpeted valor of the
warrior. I am pleased to learn that Thales was up and stirring by night
not unfrequently, as his astronomical discoveries prove. Linnaeus, setting
out for Lapland, surveys his "comb" and "spare shirt," "leathern breeches"
and "gauze cap to keep off gnats," with as much complacency as Bonaparte a
park of artillery for the Russian campaign. The quiet bravery of the man
is admirable. His eye is to take in fish, flower, and bird, quadruped and
biped. Science is always brave, for to know, is to know good; doubt and
danger quail before her eye. What the coward overlooks in his hurry, she
calmly scrutinizes, breaking ground like a pioneer for the array of arts
that follow in her train. But cowardice is unscientific; for there cannot
be a science of ignorance. There may be a science of bravery, for that
advances; but a retreat is rarely well conducted; if it is, then is it an
orderly advance in the face of circumstances.

But to draw a little nearer to our promised topics. Entomology extends the
limits of being in a new direction, so that I walk in nature with a sense
of greater space and freedom. It suggests besides, that the universe is
not rough-hewn, but perfect in its details. Nature will bear the closest
inspection; she invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest leaf,
and take an insect view of its plain. She has no interstices; every part
is full of life. I explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the myriad
sounds which crowd the summer noon, and which seem the very grain and
stuff of which eternity is made. Who does not remember the shrill
roll-call of the harvest fly? There were ears for these sounds in Greece
long ago, as Anacreon's ode will show.