CHAPTER II.

HOW TO OBSERVE.

In observation all knowledge begins. There is such a thing as seeing without sight. An interesting and useful writer* says:- "Let a man have all the world can give him, he is still miserable, if he has a grovelling, unlettered, undevout mind. Let him have his gardens, his fields, his woods, his lawns for grandeur, plenty, ornament, and gratification; while at the same time God is not in all his thoughts. And let another man have neither field nor garden; let him look only at nature with an enlightened mind-a mind which can see and adore the Creator in his works, can consider them as demonstrations of his power, his wisdom, his goodness, and his truth; this man is greater, as well as happier, in his poverty, than the other in his riches. The one is but little higher than a beast, the other but a little lower than an angel."

The vulgar idea is that the great method of obtaining knowledge is from books; but the method of the wise. man is to value books, but to rate them at no more than their proper worth. The eyes see; but there

• Jones of Nayland.

is an inward eye which makes the optic lens subservient to its purpose; and the outward and visible eye is useless it is without speculation and power, if it is not directed by the ever-vigilant inner eye. Observation -the power of reading Nature-is the great entrance of the Temple of Knowledge: this is the cause of the interest attaching to men; this gives supreme value to their writings. Books by themselves can never make a man worthy of our attention. Books, when they have been read alone, and never compared with men and things, how valueless -how tame, "stale, flat, and unprofitable" they are. Books should never be regarded as more than indexes of reference as guide-books to Nature's walks and curiosities; and even in this particular, it is far better if we can traverse the walk, and discover the hidden path, and the curious thing, without them. Without the power to observe, it is certain that nothing originally worthy can be given to the world. The power to observe character, and to present it in its various lights and shades, as it passes before the eye -the power to observe Nature-to understand her moods, her tempers, her arrangements. All Nature is but one vast museum, to which Museums, Louvres, Jardins de Plant, and Zoological Gardens, are poor, and mean, and tame. Man is perpetually on the stretch, on the gape, to behold the wonderful: he will travel miles, perhaps hundreds of miles, to see the extraordinary, when the truly extraordinary and wonderful-the noteworthy and the strange -are by his foot, and quite within his reach.

Curiosities, I say, are all around; let us look after them,

and you will not fail to find them. Think, for instance, if the common house-Spider has, in every thread which it spins, above four thousand other threads; that four millions of the threadlets of a young spider would not be thicker than a hair of a man's beard. In the wonders of insect architecture, you will find that one species of spider lives in the water, and has a house like a diving-bell; that others build houses on the ground, and close the entrance with a door, having an elastic hinge, which spontaneously keeps it shut.

How many mistakes have been made from the absence of observation—that is, from trusting the eyes without the aid of the reflective powers: thus many of our readers will remember Buffon's description of a Bat:-An animal which is half quadruped and half bird, and which, upon the whole, is neither the one or the other, must be a monstrous being; because, by uniting the attributes of two opposite genera, it resembles some of those models presented to us in the great classes of Nature. It is an imperfect quadruped, and still more imperfect bird. A quadruped should have four feet, and a bird should have feathers and wings. And what is all this but a libel upon Nature's method, which is easily detected by the close observation of Nature? So also the wing of the bat has been called a wing of leather, and the idea attached to this undoubtedly is, that it is composed of a very callous membrane-that it is an insensible piece of stuff, like a glove, or a lady's shoe. Can anything be farther from the truth? Modern naturalists tell us, that of all things in creation, the bat's wing is the

most exquisitively sensitive; its delicacy is so great, that it flies principally by the direction of its wing; this is a sort of helm by which it steers safely through all objects that might impede its flight, with as much precision if its eyes be bandaged, and in the night, as if they were uncovered, and in the middle of the day. Few of all the

millions that have been stung by the Nettle have condescended to inquire into the cause; yet we might suppose that the pain of the sting would suggest some inquiry. Who has fastened the nettle-leaf upon the pin of the microscope, and inquired into the heart of the mystery? Who has learned that the nettle-leaf is covered with millions of barbed darts, each dart filled with poison; and that the reason why the pain was felt, was, that the dart had not only made a wound, but had deposited the poison to rankle beneath the skin. The simple dandelion is discovered to be the early flower spread everywhere to furnish nutriment to the bee bees lurk amidst its flowerets, and find new life there; and the wild bees in spring, find their principal support and sustenance from it.-These are instances which we may meet in the fields. And whence, we may ask, whence came all our inventions, as we call them, though the more modest terms would be applications and discoveries? Whence, but from the observation of Nature. Was it not the Nautilus that gave to man the idea of Navigation? Whence the whirl of the water-mill, or the cottonmill, or all the marvellous instruments of optical science? Observation taught man to calculate eclipses-to measure the earth-to tell the size and distance of the sun-to dis

cover the moons of Jupiter, and the ring of Saturn; the diving-bell-the composition of the atmosphere -that the diamond is but charcoal: all these pieces of knowledge have resulted from the attentive looking at Nature, and experiments deduced from the observation.

We recently met with a very vivid and interesting picture of the Queen Bee at Home exhibiting this nice power of observation:-"The community of bees, says a writer in the 'British Quarterly Review' is an example of a pure monarchy, unrestrained by any checks on power, yet never deviating into despotism on the one hand, or anarchy on the other. Some years ago, while our gracious Queen was making a royal progress through her northern dominions, we witnessed the no less interesting sight of the progress of a queen-bee, in the glass-hive of an ingenious friend, and lover of nature, at his country retreat. The hive was of that construction which opened from behind, and showed the whole economy within. In a few minutes the queen made her appearance from the lower part of the hive. Her elongated body and tapering abdomen at once distinguished her. She moved along slowly, now and then pausing to deposit an egg in one of the empty combs; and it was most interesting to perceive how she was constantly accompanied by nearly a dozen of bees that formed a circle around her, with their heads invariably turned towards her. This guard was relieved at frequent intervals, so that as she walked forward, a new group immediately took the place of the old, and these having returned again, resumed the