Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/104

 *tects for several years past, and, indeed, I think it may be safely asserted that the study of the habits and interdependence of the members of the animate world has not, during the last fifty years, made anything like a corresponding progress to that which may be seen in classification and description. The microscope has led many who, a century ago, would have found their chief delight in observing those points in the habits and external characters of living creatures which the naked eye could readily seize upon, to look much closer, to anatomize and describe in detail every organism, great and small, and to examine every tissue and cell.

It is, however, to the materials now being amassed by these modern "cabinet naturalists" that recourse must be had if we wish to form a true comprehension of the functions and habits of living things. They must tell us, for example, what instruments, tactile and visual, an animal possesses if we wish to understand how it constructs a particular fabric, so that the "field naturalist" will have to apply to his brother of the "cabinet" before he can turn his observations to good account.

Still, the fact remains that the habits of plants and animals afford many openings for careful investigation, and such as are especially within the reach of those lovers of nature who have ample time at their disposal, and the opportunity to spend it in a warm climate where life abounds, and is never wholly checked even in the depth of winter. It seems strange to think that collectors so frequently take creatures out of wonderfully constructed nests and yet never observe, or at any rate never describe, the