Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/491

Rh vital atoms; the last visible organism vanishing from our view with the same Divine glory upon it, as the last star that glimmers out of sight on the remotest verge of space.

These organisms further justify their existence to the utilitarian, inasmuch as their study is well calculated to exercise an educational influence which should not be overlooked or despised. While they try the patience, they exercise the faculties by forcing attention upon details. Their minuteness, their general resemblance to each other, their want in many cases of very prominent or marked characteristics, render it a somewhat difficult task to identify them. Long hours may often be spent in ascertaining the name of a single species, and assigning it its proper place in the tribe to which it belongs. One species may often be confounded with another closely allied, and days and weeks may elapse before the eye and the mind, familiarized with their respective details, can observe the distinctions between them. This difficulty of identification greatly sharpens one's knowledge, induces a habit of paying attention to minutiae, and creates a power of distinguishing between things that differ slightly, which is exceedingly valuable and important. For the eye and mind thus educated to detect resemblances and differences in objects, which to ordinary observation appear widely dissimilar or precisely the same, there will be abundant scope in the practical details of common every-day life, as well as in the higher walks of literature, science, and art.

The study of these plants has also a tendency to elevate and enlarge our conceptions of Nature; its vastness and complexity, its incommunicable grandeur, its all but infinity, opening before us newer and more striking vistas with every descending step we take. The farther we advance, and the wider our sphere of observation extends, wonder follows on wonder, till our faculties become bewildered, and our intellect falls back on itself in utter hopelessness of arriving at the end. Minute as the objects are in themselves, contact with them cannot fail to excite the mind, to call it forth into full and vigorous exercise, to enlist its sympathies, and to expand its faculties. Many eloquent pages have been written to show this elevating influence upon the mind, of contact with and contemplation of the phenomena of Nature; but it is not the great and sublime objects of Nature alone that produce this effect—the sublimity of mountains, the majesty of rivers, and the repose of forests—the very humblest and simplest objects are calculated to awaken these emotions in a yet higher and purer form. "The microscope," as Mr. Lewes has well observed, "is not the mere extension of a faculty; it is a new sense."

There are also peculiar pleasures connected with the study of these objects. There is, first, the pleasure of novelty and discovery—of exploring a realm where every thing is comparatively new, and every step is delightful; where the forms are unfamiliar, and the modes of life hitherto unimagined. There is, next, the more subtle and refined