just managed to slip through his
fingers.

Again he writes:--

"So flies burn themselves in candles, deceived like mankind by the
misapplication of their knowledge."

Again:--

"An ingenious philosopher has lately denied that animals can enter into
contracts, and thinks this an essential difference between them and the
human creature: but does not daily observation convince us that they
form contracts of friendship with each other and with mankind? When
puppies and kittens play together is there not a tacit contract that
they will not hurt each other? And does not your favourite dog expect
you should give him his daily food for his services and attention to
you? And thus barters his love for your protection? In the same manner
that all contracts are made among men that do not understand each
other's arbitrary language."[160]

One more extract from a chapter full of excellent passages must suffice.

"One circumstance I shall relate which fell under my own eye, and showed
the power of reason in a wasp, as it is exercised among men. A wasp on a
gravel walk had caught a fly nearly as large as himself; kneeling on the
ground, I observed him separate the tail and the head from the body
part, to which the wings were attached. He then took the body part in
his paws, and rose about two feet from the ground with it; but a gentle
breeze wafting the wings of the fly turned him round in the air, and he
settled again with his prey upon the gravel. I then distinctly observed
him cut off with his mouth first one of the wings and then the other,
after which he flew away with it, unmolested by the wind.

"Go, proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!"[161]

Dr. Darwin's views on the essential unity of animal and vegetable life
are put forward in the following admirable chapter on "Vegetable
Animation," which I will give in full, and which is confirmed in all
important respects by the latest conclusions of our best modern
scientists, so, at least, I gather from Mr. Francis Darwin's interesting
lecture.[162]

"I. 1. The fibres of the vegetable world, as well as those of the
animal, are excitable into a variety of motion by irritations of
external objects. This appears particularly in the mimosa or sensitive
plant, whose leaves contract on the slightest injury: the _Dionaea
muscipula_, which was lately brought over from the marshes of America,
presents us with another curious instance of vegetable irritability; its
leaves ar