Why, it is only the gnats and flies.

Only the gnats and flies?  You might study those gnats and flies for your whole life without finding out all—­or more than a very little—­about them.  I wish I knew how they move those tiny wings of theirs—­a thousand times in a second, I dare say, some of them.  I wish I knew how far they know that they are happy—­for happy they must be, whether they know it or not.  I wish I knew how they live at all.  I wish I even knew how many sorts there are humming round us at this moment.

How many kinds?  Three or four?

More probably thirty or forty round this single tree.

But why should there be so many kinds of living things?  Would not one or two have done just as well?

Why, indeed?  Why should there not have been only one sort of butterfly, and he only of one colour, a plain brown, or a plain white?

And why should there be so many sorts of birds, all robbing the garden at once?  Thrushes, and blackbirds, and sparrows, and chaffinches, and greenfinches, and bullfinches, and tomtits.

And there are four kinds of tomtits round here, remember:  but we may go on with such talk for ever.  Wiser men than we have asked the same question:  but Lady Why will not answer them yet.  However, there is another question, which Madam How seems inclined to answer just now, which is almost as deep and mysterious.

What?

How all these different kinds of things became different.

Oh, do tell me!

Not I. You must begin at the beginning, before you can end at the end, or even make one step towards the end.

What do you mean?

You must learn the differences between things, before you can find out how those differences came about.  You must learn Madam How’s alphabet before you can read her book.  And Madam How’s alphabet of animals and plants is, Species, Kinds of things.  You must see which are like, and which unlike; what they are like in, and what they are unlike in.  You are beginning to do that with your collection of butterflies.  You like to arrange them, and those that are most like nearest to each other, and to compare them.  You must do that with thousands of different kinds of things before you can read one page of Madam How’s Natural History Book rightly.

But it will take so much time and so much trouble.

God grant that you may not spend more time on worse matters, and take more trouble over things which will profit you far less.  But so it must be, willy-nilly.  You must learn the alphabet if you mean to read.  And you must learn the value of the figures before you can do a sum.  Why, what would you think of any one who sat down to play at cards—­for money too (which I hope and trust you never will do)—­before he knew the names of the cards, and which counted highest, and took the other?

Of course he would be very foolish.