A curious wheelwork runs round its four outspread petals;
and a chain of minute things, living and dead, is winding in and out of
their curves into a gulf at the back of the flower. What happens to them
there we cannot see; for round the stem is raised a tube of golden-brown
balls, all regularly piled on each other. Some creature dashes by, and
like a flash the flower vanishes within its tube.
"We sink still lower, and now see on the bottom slow gliding lumps of
jelly that thrust a shapeless arm out where they will, and grasping their
prey with these chance limbs, wrap themselves round their food to get a
meal; for they creep without feet, seize without hands, eat without
mouths, and digest without stomachs."
Too many, however, still feel only in Nature that which we share "with the
weed and the worm;" they love birds as boys do--that is, they love
throwing stones at them; or wonder if they are good to eat, as the
Esquimaux asked about the watch; or treat them as certain devout Afreedee
villagers are said to have treated a descendant of the Prophet--killed him
in order to worship at his tomb: but gradually we may hope that the love
of Science--the notes "we sound upon the strings of nature" [2]--will
become to more and more, as already it is to many, a "faithful and sacred
element of human feeling.
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