How is a very
skilful workwoman, and has eyes which see deeper and clearer than all
microscopes; as you would find, if you tried to see what makes that
"Midsummer hum" of which the haymakers are so fond, because it promises
fair weather.

Why, it is only the gnats and flies.

Only the gnats and flies? You might study those gnats and flies for your
whole life without finding out all--or more than a very little--about
them. I wish I knew how they move those tiny wings of theirs--a thousand
times in a second, I dare say, some of them. I wish I knew how far they
know that they are happy--for happy they must be, whether they know it or
not. I wish I knew how they live at all. I wish I even knew how many
sorts there are humming round us at this moment.

How many kinds? Three or four?

More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.

But why should there be so many kinds of living things? Would not one or
two have done just as well?

Why, indeed? Why should there not have been only one sort of butterfly,
and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain white?

And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at
once? Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and
greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits.

And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember: but we may go
on with such talk for ever. Wiser men than we have asked the same
question: but Lady Why will not answer them yet. However, there is
another question, which Madam How seems inclined to answer just now,
which is almost as deep and mysterious.

What?

_How_ all these different kinds of things became different.

Oh, do tell me!

Not I. You must begin at the beginning, before you can end at the end,
or even make one step towards the end.

What do you mean?

You must learn the differences between things, before you can find out
how those differences came about. You must learn Madam How's alphabet
before you can read her book. And Madam How's alphabet of animals and
plants is, Species, Kinds of things. You must see which are like, and
which unlike; what they are like in, and what they are unlike in. You
are beginning to do that with your collection of butterflies. You like
to arrange them, and those that are most like nearest to each other, and
to compare them. You must do that with thousands of different kinds of
things before you can read one page of Madam How's Natural Histo