The Fairy-Land of Science | Page 9

as the story of the building of any fairy
palace in the days of old. Read all this, and then if you have no coral of
your own to examine, go to the British Museum and see the beautiful
specimens in the glass cases there, and think that they have been built
up under the rolling surf by the tiny jelly animals; and then coral will
become a real living thing to you, and you will love the thoughts it
awakens.
But people often ask, what is the use of learning all this? If you do not
feel by this time how delightful it is to fill your mind with beautiful
pictures of nature, perhaps it would be useless to say more. But in this
age of ours, when restlessness and love of excitement pervade so many
lives, is it nothing to be taken out of ourselves and made to look at the
wonders of nature going on around us? Do you never feel tired and "out
of sorts," and want to creep away from your companions, because they
are merry and you are not? Then is the time to read about the starts, and
how quietly they keep their course from age to age; or to visit some
little flower, and ask what story it has to tell; or to watch the clouds,
and try to imagine how the winds drive them across the sky. No person
is so independent as he who can find interest in a bare rock, a drop of
water, the foam of the sea, the spider on the wall, the flower underfoot
or the starts overhead. And these interests are open to everyone who
enters the fairy-land of science.
Moreover, we learn from this study to see that there is a law and
purpose in everything in the Universe, and it makes us patient when we
recognize the quiet noiseless working of nature all around us. Study

light, and learn how all colour, beauty, and life depend on the sun's rays;
note the winds and currents of the air, regular even in their apparent
irregularity, as they carry heat and moisture all over the world. Watch
the water flowing in deep quiet streams, or forming the vast ocean; and
then reflect that every drop is guided by invisible forces working
according to fixed laws. See plants springing up under the sunlight,
learn the secrets of plant life, and how their scents and colours attract
the insects. Read how insects cannot live without plants, nor plants
without the flitting butterfly or the busy bee. Realize that all this is
worked by fixed laws, and that out of it (even if sometimes in suffering
and pain) springs the wonderful universe around us. And then say, can
you fear for your own little life, even though it may have its troubles?
Can you help feeling a part of this guided and governed nature? or
doubt that the power which fixed the laws of the stars and of the tiniest
drop of water - that made the plant draw power from the sun, the tine
coral animal its food from the dashing waves; that adapted the flower to
the insect and the insect to the flower - is also moulding your life as
part of the great machinery of the universe, so that you have only to
work, and to wait, and to love?
We are all groping dimly for the Unseen Power, but no one who loves
nature and studies it can ever feel alone or unloved in the world. Facts,
as mere facts, are dry and barren, but nature is full of life and love, and
her calm unswerving rule is tending to some great though hidden
purpose. You may call this Unseen Power what you will - may lean on
it in loving, trusting faith, or bend in reverent and silent awe; but even
the little child who lives with nature and gazes on her with open eye,
must rise in some sense or other through nature to nature's God.

Week 3
Lecture II Sunbeams and How They Work
Who does not love the sunbeams, and feel brighter and merrier as he
watches them playing on the wall, sparkling like diamonds on the
ripples of the sea, or making bows of coloured light on the waterfall? Is

not the sunbeam so dear to us that it has become a household word for
all that is merry and gay? and when we want to describe the dearest,
busiest little sprite amongst us, who wakes a smile on all faces
wherever she goes, do we not call her the "sunbeam of the house"?
And yet how little even the wisest among us know about the nature and
work of these bright messengers of the sun as they dart