Studies in Animal Life.
"Authentic tidings of invisible things;—
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation."—The Excursion.
CHAPTER II.
Ponds and rock-pools—Our necessary tackle—Wimbledon Common—Early memories—Gnat
larvæ—Entomostraca and their paradoxes—Races of animals dispensing with
the sterner sex—Insignificance of males—Volvox globator: is it an animal?—Plants
swimming like animals—Animal retrogressions—The Dytiscus and its
larva—The dragon-fly larva—Molluscs and their eggs—Polypes, and how to find
them—A new polype, Hydra rubra—Nest-building fish—Contempt replaced by
reverence.
The day is bright with a late autumn sun; the sky is clear with a keen
autumn wind, which lashes our blood into a canter as we press against
it, and the cantering blood sets the thoughts into hurrying excitement.
Wimbledon Common is not far off; its five thousand acres of undulating
heather, furze, and fern tempt us across it, health streaming in at every
step as we snuff the keen breeze. We are tempted also to bring net and
wide-mouthed jar, to ransack its many ponds for visible and invisible
wonders.
Ponds, indeed, are not so rich and lovely as rock-pools; the heath is less alluring than the coast—our dear-loved coast, with its gleaming mystery, the sea, and its sweeps of sand, its reefs, its dripping boulders. I admit the comparative inferiority of ponds; but, you see, we are not near the coast, and the heath is close at hand. Nay, if the case were otherwise, I should object to dwarfing comparisons. It argues a pitiful thinness of nature (and the majority in this respect are lean) when present excellence is depreciated because some greater excellence is to be found elsewhere. We are not elsewhere; we must do the best we can with what is here. Because ours is not the Elizabethan age, shall we express no reverence for our great men, but reserve it for Shakspeare, Bacon, and Raleigh, whose traditional renown must overshadow our contemporaries? Not so. To each age its honour. Let us be thankful for all greatness, past or present, and never speak slightingly of noble work, or honest endeavour, because it is not, or we choose to say it is not, equal to something else. No comparisons then, I beg. If I said ponds were finer than rock-pools, you might demur; but I only say ponds are excellent things, let us dabble in them; ponds are rich in wonders, let us enjoy them.
