W. H. Davenport Adams

“ Let us beware, however, when we devote our life to the pursuit of wisdom, that we do not make a false start. Do not let us diverge into the narrow way of bigotry and dogma. It is the property of exclusive and intolerant error to dominate and to reign alone. For this reason we systematically refuse and reject all control; and it is thus men have been fatally led to lay a rash hand upon intellectual liberty,—liberty, which the All-wise Himself has refrained from touching! Such is the early taint of our race, the moral situation of humanity. ”

“ Pursuing this train of thought, I was led to think of the number of genera and species into which the plant world is divided,—a remarkable proof, not only of the power and wisdom, but of the goodness of the Creator, of His desire to furnish man with inexhaustible sources of pleasure and entertainment; and finally, to put to myself the question, How many vegetable species exist over the whole surface of the globe? ”

“ These, indeed, they would utterly ignore; they would live, like the brutes, unconscious of their destiny, if, at the bottom of their indestructible conscience, there did not prevail a glimmer of light, though more or less eclipsed, if they did not all feel themselves attracted, if they did not all irresistibly gravitate, some more quickly, others more slowly, towards the sun of eternal truth and justice. Instead of moving with sidelong sinuous pace, instead of taking ninety-nine steps backward for every one hundred taken in advance, they would all march onward in the way of progress ”

“ Thus the poppy, when in bud, hangs down on its stem, and preserves its petals from rain and wind; but as [263] soon as it is fully developed, and has acquired strength, and the sun's rays are necessary to perfect its colours, it expands to the full light of day. The violet, again, while its seed is forming, shades the capsule by its purple corolla; but as soon as the seeds are ripe, and they are required to spring to some distance from their capsules, the flower immediately rises up with the cup for its support, and flings abroad its offering on the earth's maternal bosom. ”

“ We have returned, at least in an astronomical sense, to the budding, happy, radiant spring; the sun, in its apparent course, crosses the equinoctial line; the duration of the day, transiently equal to that of the night, will augment in proportion as the great luminary describes above our horizon greater and yet greater arcs of a circle. Yet this is not the budding, happy, radiant spring of the poets. No, if it be spring according to the law of universal gravitation, it is winter still by the law of life. ”

“ To see, to observe; to retrace one's steps, that one may see and observe more distinctly; is a labour repugnant to the human mind. To create systems, in order that he may proclaim himself a great doctrinal teacher, is the work which flatters man, or the creative power of his imagination. Centuries of effort are needed before he can disentangle himself from his self-woven thrall in presence of the phenomena of nature.
A striking peculiarity in the mole's structure is his hands, or feet, with their five fingers, or toes, turned outward, and their curious resemblance to the human hand. ”

“ Scarce an eye meets it but that of the towering bird, as he dashes through the air above it, yet is it as full of lustre as the flowers we daily see and admire. Surely it should arrest the eye and the thoughts of the traveller as certainly as would a monument of human skill on such a spot. Like a lone ruin, it is a page of story, telling not only of the past, but the present, and reminding us of a Being who has reared it there, where it stands a memento of power and goodness. ”

“ A shroud is used to wrap round a dead body, a corpse, whose elements, since they are no longer maintained united by the undefinable principle of life, go to form other compounds,—more permanent and lasting,—which will mingle with the earth, the water, and the air. But the earth which the snow covers preserves, on the contrary, the germ of life in the seeds and roots of plants; it rests itself, only for the purpose of communicating, at the return of spring, a new impulse to the sap, whose circulation sleeps during winter. ”

“ The former ought even to secure our preference; it is there only that we are free, that we can become true creators, by creating for ourselves our own happiness; that we can grow great before our own eyes, by following, not the tyrannous will of the brute, but the tender voice of the angel; by listening to conscience—that pure and infallible counsellor—conscience, the foundation of all justice, the latent force of generations passing away and coming, the universal gravitation of our species as of all the ultra-terrestrial humanities. ”

“ A solemn moment is it when the sap—that life-blood of the plant—arrested by the icy grasp of winter in its circulatory movement—receives a new impulse through the vivifying action of the central luminary of our system. ”

“ Snow-white, and faint rose-red, and soft delicate lilac,—these are the prevailing hues of its tender petals.
It is said that the wood anemone never blossoms earlier than March 16, and never later than April 2. It opens out its loveliness to the sun about the same time as the swallow returns from the genial South to our land of pleasant verdure. Country children associate it with the appearance of the cuckoo, and call it the "cuckoo flower," but the "wandering voice" is later than the woodland blossom in its welcome to the spring. ”

“ Many the changes which since that distant epoch have taken place upon the earth, and many more must occur before our planet ceases to contribute its strain to the grand harmony of the spheres. Our world will end as surely as it once had a beginning: its duration, though it be computed by hundreds of thousands of years, is nothing, will be nothing, compared with that of the revolution of yonder sun, circling, with its wondrous train of planets, around some mysterious centre as yet unknown. ”

“ Such a day, in this sad season of the year, when the glory of the woods is rapidly departing, and from the swollen streams and dewy pastures the vapours ascend in a dense whirl of clouds, is of frequent occurrence; and on such a day, the solar sphere, as it struggles through the screening mists, seems like the face of the moon at its full, when slightly veiled. ”

“ Yet this very layer of arable earth, to which all bodies must return after death what they have taken from it during life,—this much despised humus, furnishes all our agricultural products, the very foundation and support of our material existence.
To touch industrial occupations—to meddle with trade, commerce, or agriculture—is unworthy of Science! Such is the silly cry of the many distinguished savants who pride themselves on what they call their "freedom from selfish considerations." ”

“ Unquestionably, if you have eyes, you cannot fail to see the apparent movement of the earth and moon; but from thence to the relation of the whole celestial sphere is a wide interval. How many men are there who possess, on the one hand, sufficient patience to fix their gaze only for a couple of hours on the same point of the starry firmament; and, on the other, sufficient intelligence to estimate the relation of this point to a fixed point of the horizon, and to measure, by the thought, the interval separating these two points? Let each one ask himself. ”

“ Everything, force and matter, testifies to an entire unity of plan or thought, and the mind which is powerful enough to rise above all the attractions and influences of the body, the mind which, by its continuous labour, alone renders life and man of any importance, the mind once detached from the animal nature which it drags behind it like a prisoner to the chariot of his conqueror, shall it be inferior to inert matter? ”

“ It is thus that a seed, removed [198] from the stem which nourished it, wanders afar to diffuse and perfect its species. Our planet, of an ochreous yellow, relieved with green and white, possesses no special privileges; it shares in the ponderated movements of the spheres; it is neither the largest, nor the smallest, nor the heaviest, nor the lightest, nor the nearest to, nor the farthest from, the sun. And shall Earth alone, of all the planets, nourish that kind of "thinking seed" which we name the human race? ”

“ Moles are among the most prolific of mammals; and, in fact, were it not so, their race would have been long ago exterminated. We may, perhaps, venture to say, that by multiplying so prodigiously, they wish to do us a service in spite of ourselves. How tender is the solicitude of nature for the ungrateful human species!
To see the marvellous qualities ascribed to the mole by the ancients, one would suppose that they had made him the object of their special study. ”

“ The unequal duration of Day and Night, the succession and regular return of the seasons, all the phenomena observable upon the earth, are but the effects of a cause which we must seek in the heavens. It is impossible to explain them unless we contemplate it on high, relegating our planet into the great chorus of the worlds, where it holds but a modest rank. ”

“ Let us follow those which direct their course towards our planet.
So long as the rays do not come into collision, or strike against resistant matter, they neither warm nor enlighten. Confirming the Newtonian hypothesis of emission, they travel straight as arrows through the icy space, the shadowy ocean in which the waves of the terrestrial atmosphere are lost. But the moment they encounter a material obstacle, the rays partly penetrate it, and are partly thrown back, in such a manner as to form a series of undulations like those which the falling of a stone into a pond produces. ”

“ The latter he regards with much the same feelings as a society wholly composed of honest men would regard an infusion of the "dangerous elements;" for weeds, like rogues, take what is not their own, and deprive others of their means of sustenance. But to classify plants according to their virtues or vices is not worthy of science, exclaims the rigid botanist. Would you mingle vile self-interest with the pure study of the vegetable kingdom? Remember that all selfish feelings ought to be banished from the sublime sanctuary of analysis and synthesis. ”

“ To suppose that beyond humanity there is only nothingness, would be to enunciate an hypothesis as puerile as that which pretended the earth was not only the centre of our system, but the sole inhabited or inhabitable point in the immensity of space, and that the stars of the firmament were created for the service and pleasure of mortals. ”

“ We now know why, for a whole series of centuries, men would not follow in the footsteps of Aristotle, who was the first to establish theoretically the sphericity of the earth.
The discovery of the New World, and the voyages of circumnavigation which rapidly succeeded one another, demonstrated, not only that inhabitants there are whose feet are opposite to ours, but that the earth does not rest upon any species of support; that it floats, like a star, freely in space. ”

“ This giant bird, with his carnivorous instincts, is endowed with a remarkable tenacity of life, and can exist in habitats wholly inaccessible to man. But it is strange that a bird, which is as common a type of humility as the eagle is of ambition, and which we almost always cite as a contrast to the eagle—we mean, the delicate little wren—should also be found among the snow and ice, the silence and solitude, of the loftiest mountain regions. ”

“ The water-rat hides among the flowers, nibbling with much glee at the arrow-head, or rushing out from under its broad green leaves; and the water-fowl, followed by her young, sails across the stream in all the stateliness of matron dignity; and the little meek-eyed daisy grows beside the yellow velvet flower of the silver-weed, or the blue blossoms and succulent leaves of the brook-lime."
The true Forget-me-not, Myosotis palustris, is invariably found in marshy localities or on the banks of streams; but the Meadow Scorpion-grass, Myosotis arvensis, is frequently mistaken for it. ”

“ One wild species, the Mountain Pink (Dianthus cœsius) , it has never been my fortune to gather in its native home. It is described as a large handsome flower, and it loves to breathe [375] the "difficult air" of the lofty mountain-top. "Never," we are told, "is it found in plain or valley; but it is one of those blossoms whose beauty gladdens the mountaineer, or bids the traveller wonder that so lovely a flower should be blushing on the lone summit, scarcely accessible to his footstep; or cheering a rock, where only the yellow lichen, or the verdant or gray moss, reminds him of vegetation. ”

“ The product of the observation remains; transmissible from generation to generation, it will gradually expand and increase, if it be founded upon truth; but, on the contrary, its splendour will wane, and will eventually disappear, if it be founded upon error. Eternal is this spectacle of actors and puppets succeeding one another uninterruptedly upon the same stage! As one falls, another steps forward into his place, and so the great army marches forward with unbroken ranks. ”

“ Now, no effort of the imagination is required to understand why the inhabitants of the northern hemisphere enjoy summer while those of the southern are enduring winter; why it is "blossoming spring" to the former when it is "purple autumn" to the latter, and vice versâ. Equally easy is it to comprehend why, after the equinox, day, or the duration of the sun above the horizon, gradually diminishes in one hemisphere and increases in the other; why, in summer, and in both hemispheres, the longest days alternate with the shortest nights, and in winter, the longest nights with the shortest days. ”

“ We do not meet with the absolute in the material, any more than in the intellectual world. Truth, by its power of attraction, sets in motion all the wheels of our understanding; we seek after it eagerly, in the doubt which torments us, in the obscurity which surrounds us ”

“ In that case what becomes of the power and travail of humanity? All they have accomplished are some slight changes of the terrestrial crust, barely sufficient, here and there, to modify the influences of climate. A limited number of men labour, it is true, for the progress and full development of transmissible thought. But even supposing that, in the course of centuries, humanity succeeds in comprehending, it can only grow through the development of the faculties of all its members, and the due balance of all the social forces by means of liberty. ”

“ In the other seasons of the year, and particularly in summer, the twilight gleam encroaches, so to speak, upon a portion of the nights, which are otherwise so brief, and precludes our vision from any exact estimate of the stars. Those demitints, those soft subdued reflections of light, scarcely permit the eye to distinguish even stars of the first and second magnitude, which shine like spots of dull gold on a background of pale silver. ”