[CE] See Professor Herdman's Inaugural Address, Liverpool Biological Society, 1888. [CF] Francis Galton, "Inquiries into Human Faculty," p. 216. [CG] That the epidermis is thicker on the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet in the infant long before birth, may be attributable to the inherited effects of use or pressure. It can hardly be held that the thickening of the skin in these parts is of elimination value. [CH] The instances cited are from "Animals and Plants under Domestication." CHAPTER VI. ORGANIC EVOLUTION. It is difficult to realize the wealth, the variety, the diversity, of "animal life." Even if we endeavour to pass in review all that we have seen in woodland and meadow, in pond or pool, in the air, on the earth, in the waters, in temperate or tropical regions; even when we try to remember the results of all anatomical and microscopic investigation displaying new wonders and new diversities hidden from ordinary and unaided vision; even when we call to mind the multifarious contents, recent and fossil, of all the natural history museums we have ever visited, and throw in such mental pictures as we have formed of all the diverse adaptations we have read about or heard described;--even so we cannot but be conscious that not one-tenth, not one-hundredth, part of the diversity and variety of animal life has passed before our mental vision even in sample. It is said that our greatest living poet once, when a young man, left his companions to gaze into the waters of a clear, still pool. "What an imagination God has!" he said, as he rejoined his friends. Fit observation for the poet, whose sensitive nature must be keenly alive to the varied endowments which Nature has lavishly showered upon her animate children. Certain it is that words, mere words, can never present, though they may aid in recalling, an adequate picture of either the wealth or the beauty of animal life. Fortunately for those who visit London (and who nowadays does not?), we have, in our national collection in South Kensington, the means of getting some insight into the wealth of life. And much is being done there to aid the imagination and to facilitate study for those who are not professed students. Many of the birds are now to be seen set in their natural surroundings, with their life-history illustrated. Our frontispiece is taken from one of these cases. And this admirable system will, no doubt, so far as space permits, be extended; and, perhaps, dramatic incidents may be introduced, like those (notably in the life of heron and hawk) which form so marked a feature in the little museum at Exeter. Anything which leads us to understand the life of animals, and to go forth and study it for ourselves, has an educational value.