"H. wants me to go farther in the Cass Front; But I am determined to
fall in the rear, as I have written to him. For the last three years I
have been going on the Dutch plan, which, had I always pursued, I should
now have had $10,000 in gold in my trunk, instead of having ten thousand
trunks full of _ground_."
_7th_. Dick says that there are about 60,000 species in the animal
kingdom. Of these, 600 species are mammalia, or sucklings, mostly
four-footed; 4,000 birds, 3,000 fish, 700 reptiles, 44,000 insects,
about 3,000 shell fish, and 80 to 100,000 animalcula, invisible to the
naked eye. Perhaps these species may reach to 300,000 altogether. Yet
here are no estimates for plants, ferns, mosses, madrepores, extinct
fossil species, minerals and rocks. What a field for the naturalist! Yet
Pope could exclaim--
"Say what the use, were finer optics given,
T' inspect a mite--not comprehend the heaven."
We are, in fact, equally and as much in want of microscopic and
telescopic knowledge.
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