A particularly objectionable thing in these water drops, the dabbler
insists upon my spying at is the furious activity of everything you see
in them. You look down his wretched tube, and there, bright and yellow
with the lamplight in the round field of the microscope, is a perfect
riot of living things. Perhaps it's the water he got from Hampstead, and
a dozen flat things the shape of shortbreads will be fussing about.
They are all quite transparent and colourless, and move about like
galleys by means of a lot of minute oars that stick out all over them.
Never a moment's rest. And, presently, one sees that even the green
plant threads are wriggling across the field. The dabbler tries to
moralise on this in the vein of Charles Kingsley, and infer we have much
to learn from these ridiculous creatures; but, so far as I can see, it's
a direct incentive to sloth to think how low in the scale of creation
these things are, in spite of all their fussing. If they had sat about
more and thought, they might be fishing the dabbler out of ponds and
examining him instead of his examining them. Your energetic people might
do worse things than have a meditative half-hour at the microscope. Then
there are green things with a red spot and a tail, that creep about like
slugs, and are equally transparent. _Euglena viridis_ the dabbler calls
them, which seems unnecessary information. In fact all the things he
shows me are transparent. Even the little one-eyed Crustacea, the size
of a needle-point, that discredit the name of Cyclops. You can see their
digestion and muscle and nerve, and, in fact, everything. It's at least
a blessing we are not the same. Fancy the audible comments of the
temperance advocate when you get in the bus! No use pulling yourself
together then. "Pretty full!" And "Look," people would say, "his wife
gives him cold mutton."

Speaking of the name of Cyclops reminds me that these scientific people
have been playing a scurvy trick upon the classics behind our backs. It
reminds one of Epistemon's visit to Hades, when he saw Alexander a
patcher of clouts and Xerxes a crier of mustard. Aphrodite, the dabbler
tells me, is a kind of dirty mud-worm, and much dissected by spectacled
pretenders to the London B.Sc.; every candidate, says the syllabus, must
be able to dissect, to the examiner's satisfaction, and demonstrate upon
Aphrodite, Nereis, Palaemon. Were the gods ever so insulted? Then the
snaky Medusa and Pandora, our mot