Leisure-time Studies Chiefly Biological Author:Andrew Wilson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A STUDY OF LOWER LIFE. As has well been observed, the phrase Omne ignotumpro magnifico is not more appropriate or true than its reyerse or opposite. Applying ... more »the apothegm to zoological science, one of the greatest advantages of natural-history study may be shown to exist in the fact that it directs our attention to new and curious features in the commonest living forms around us, and by aiding both our mental and physical perceptions, largely extends the range of the most commonplace observation. The " sight" of the natural historian is, in fact, anything but "unassisted." On the contrary, it discerns beauty and grace where vision of the latter description could perceive nothing worthy of attention or study. If Pope's dictum, that " the proper study of mankind is man," be accepted as literally true, and as tending to limit human observation to the investigation of its own peculiarities, the zoologist may fitly remind the poet, that the study of lower forms not only assists our appreciation of human affairs, but sometimes actually explains and elucidates points in man's history which otherwise would remain utterly obscure. Thus the spirit of a liberal science is most decided in its opposition to any exclusiveness in the objects submitted to its scrutiny ; since, recognising the interdependence of the various branches of knowledge, we learn that the advance of one study really means the improvement of all. No better illustration of the manner in which a simple study in biology may be made to form a text for the illustration of some facts and points interesting to the world at large, can well be selected, than that comprised in the life-history chapter{Section 4of the little animal known as the Hydra, or " Common Freshwater Polype" (Fig. i). The examination of this common de...« less