"The rearing of larvæ, . . . when joined with the entomological
collection, adds immense interest to Saturday afternoon rambles, and
forms an admirable introduction to the study of physiology."
"When simple curiosity passes into the love of knowledge as such, and the
gratification of the æsthetic sense of the beauty of completeness and
accuracy seems more desirable than the easy indolence of ignorance; when
the finding out of the causes of things becomes a source of joy, and he
is counted happy who is successful in the search; common knowledge of
Nature passes into what our forefathers called Natural History, from
whence there is but a step to that which used to be termed Natural
Philosophy, and now passes by the name of Physical Science."
"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth,
and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different
from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the
largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is
almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of
Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence
to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the
Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of Nature, from
famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of
conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly
follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms
or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according
to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."