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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: like myself, that I principally write) must be content to tread in
the tracks of greater men who have preceded him, and accept at
second or third hand their foregone conclusions.
But this is most unsatisfactory; for in giving up discovery, one
gives up one of the highest enjoyments of Natural History. There
is a mysterious delight in the discovery of a new species, akin to
that of seeing for the first time, in their native haunts, plants
or animals of which one has till then only read. Some, surely, who
read these pages have experienced that latter delight; and, though
they might find it hard to define whence the pleasure arose, know
well that it was a solid pleasure, the memory of which they would
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