Facts are the words of God, and we may heap them together endlessly, but they will teach us little or nothing till we place them in their true relations, and recognize the thought that binds them together.

The study of Nature is intercourse with the Highest Mind.

Embryology furnishes, also, the best measure of true affinities existing between animals.

The surface of the earth is not simply a stage on which the thousands of present and past inhabitants played their parts in turn. There are much more intimate relations between the earth and the living organisms which populated it, and it may even be demonstrated that the earth was developed because of them.

The study of Nature is intercourse with the highest mind. You should never trifle with Nature. At her lowest her works are the works of the highest powers, the highest something in the universe, in whichever way we look at it... This is the charm of Study from Nature itself; she brings us back to absolute truth wherever we wander.

A laboratory of natural history is a sanctuary where nothing profane should be tolerated. I feel less agony at improprieties in churches than in a scientific laboratory.

But unless some great revolution in nature modifies the present relative level between land and sea, it may safely be maintained that the present outer reef is the final southern boundary of the North American continent.