his long limbs, would be absolutely incapable of
attending to matters alone, even in the most ordinary circumstances of
life. He was not troublesome, oh! no, but rather embarrassing for
others, and embarrassed for himself. Easily satisfied, besides being
very accommodating, forgetting to eat or drink, if some one did not
bring him something to eat or drink, insensible to the cold as to the
heat, he seemed to belong less to the animal kingdom than to the
vegetable kingdom. One must conceive a very useless tree, without fruit
and almost without leaves, incapable of giving nourishment or shelter,
but with a good heart.

Such was Cousin Benedict. He would very willingly render service to
people if, as Mr. Prudhomme would say, he were capable of rendering it.

Finally, his friends loved him for his very feebleness. Mrs. Weldon
regarded him as her child--a large elder brother of her little Jack.

It is proper to add here that Cousin Benedict was, meanwhile, neither
idle nor unoccupied. On the contrary, he was a worker. His only
passion--natural history--absorbed him entirely.

To say "Natural History" is to say a great deal.

We know that the different parts of which this science is composed are
zoology, botany, mineralogy, and geology.

Now Cousin Benedict was, in no sense, a botanist, nor a mineralogist,
nor a geologist.

Was he, then, a zoologist in the entire acceptation of the word, a kind
of Cuvier of the New World, decomposing an animal by analysis, or
putting it together again by synthesis, one of those profound
connoisseurs, versed in the study of the four types to which modern
science refers all animal existence, vertebrates, mollusks,
articulates, and radiates? Of these four divisions, had the artless but
studious savant observed the different classes, and sought the orders,
the families, the tribes, the genera, the species, and the varieties
which distinguish them?

No.

Had Cousin Benedict devoted himself to the study of the vertebrates,
mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes?

No.

Was it to the mollusks, from the cephalopodes to the bryozoans, that he
had given his preference, and had malacology no more secrets for him?

Not at all.

Then it was on the radiates, echinoderms, acalephes, polypes,
entozoons, sponges, and infusoria, that he had for such a long time
burned the midnight oil?

It must, indeed, be confessed that it was not on the radiates.

Now, in zoology there only remains to be me