Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/395

Rh simultaneously, not merely consecutively. The Wagnerian opera, therefore, that employs both visible and invisible characters, shows an advance worthy our present attainments.

It was stated above that, while other artists are occupied with the tangible forms of the external, visible world, the musician is busily engaged in the study of the human soul; yet it must be remembered that he has had to seek for the germs of his art in nature, and that these were hidden from him so deeply that they were hidden long.

His resonator must be constructed to re-enforce some particular note which he supposes to be sounding, whereas the telescope of the astronomer reveals many unsought objects at once. And while the painter finds his forms and colors openly displayed, the musician must evolve his from within. He creates both form and spirit, and so entirely, that we can form no notion of the smallest tributary melody in any work we have not actually heard, or the score of which we have not seen.

If our civilization endures or progresses, there can be little doubt that the music of the future will continue to give evidence of the fact, even if it should not contribute to the general advancement.



ANY difficulties, says the "Quarterly Review," tend to prevent ichthyology becoming a popular study, as the study of shells, insects, birds, or flowers is popular. However it may be with the particular species that anglers seek out and professional fishermen hunt, fishes as a class are not familiar objects. They keep for the most part out of sight, and when at liberty in their element can be detected only by passing glimpses, after which they are nearly always immediately lost. The aquarium, whatever it may have done to aid the study of the lower forms of aquatic animals, has contributed little or nothing to promote a real knowledge of ichthyology; and a preserved specimen of a fish is a most unsatisfactory object, as far as it can be from having anything of the color or the life or the grace of a real fish, and can not by any possibility be made to present a natural aspect.

Another serious difficulty in the way of the student of fishes may be stated thus: In beginning the study of any department of natural history, whether it relates to plants or to animals, the first effort is to find out characteristics of the smaller groups composing it, and to 