2.  In the first place, 227 withered leaves of various kinds, mostly of English plants, were pulled out of worm burrows in several places.  Of these, 181 had been drawn into the burrows by or near their tips, so that the footstalk projected nearly upright from the mouth of the burrow; 20 had been drawn in by their bases, and in this case the tips projected from the burrows; and 26 had been seized near the middle, so that these had been drawn in transversely and were much crumpled.  Therefore 80 per cent (always using the nearest whole number) had been drawn in by the tip, 9 per cent by the base or footstalk, and 11 per cent transversely or by the middle.  This alone is almost sufficient to show that chance does not determine the manner in which leaves are dragged into the burrows.

—­Darwin:  Vegetable Mold and Earthworms.

3. The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the folly or fault of a man; the redemption, if there be any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, failing that, there is none.  The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children; the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had cast her away from him; as it is, she all but saves him.  Of Othello, I need not trace the tale; nor the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony against his error:—­

“Oh, murderous coxcomb! what should such a fool Do with so good a wife?”

In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of her husband.  In The Winter’s Tale, and in Cymbeline, the happiness and existence of two princely households, lost through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly patience and wisdom of the wives.  In Measure for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious truth and adamantine purity of a woman.  In Coriolanus, the mother’s counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved her son from all evil; his momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last, granted, saves him—­not, indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the destroyer of his country.

—­Ruskin:  Sesame and Lilies.

4.

Bas. So may the outward shows be least themselves;
The world is still deceived with ornament. 
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being season’d with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?  In religion,
What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text,
Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?