TO EAT AND TO BE EATEN. 613 



law of to eat and to be eaten ! The name of the creatures, who fondly 

 imagine that this fair human form was spread as a banquet for them, 

 is legion. Gnats, ticks, lice, mites, flies, fleas, mosquitoes, form a few 

 of our temperate host, while in torrid regions they swarm in tenfold 

 profusion and variety, causing the happy dwellers in the land of eter- 

 nal summer to spend a considerable portion of their lazy days and 

 nights in the monotonous labor of scratching, slapping, squirming, 

 and perhaps occasionally swearing their jaw-breaking oaths at the tor- 

 ments which surround them. 



And inside as well as outside man is a harvest-field for the midges. 

 Worms of unpleasing variety infest him in every organ, troubling not 

 alone the digestive region, but lying. hid in the firm flesh, the brain, 

 even the eye. And that minute but multitudinous creature with which 

 a pork diet furnishes him the trichina makes the whole body its 

 home, and literally eats him up alive. 



Nor has our economical mother Nature more mercy on her other 

 gigantic creatures than upon man. They are all the prey of some 

 special insects or other parasites. And not alone the great, but the 

 small, for we perceive creatures visible only under the microscope that 

 form the homes of still smaller parasites. It becomes, indeed, an un- 

 pleasant wonder what marvelous adaptations of animal life have been 

 formed apparently for no other purpose than to batten and fatten 

 upon and make miserable all larger creatures, for whose greater size 

 they make up by vaster multitudes. 



It is economy all. There must be no waste of organic material. If 

 some suffer thereby, it is their misfortune. The law can not be set 

 aside for special purposes. There are no good ends ever gained with- 

 out certain unpleasant drawbacks. The end here to be gained is life 

 abounding, immeasurable life. To reach this result, no organic 

 force can be spared, and if some have to scratch and squirm, still it 

 will be found here, as in all Nature's economies, that the evil is small, 

 the good attained great. She works by law alone, and a law of Nat- 

 ure is never laid aside because it happens to tread on some crippled 

 creature's corns. Law is immutable, and will inevitably crush every 

 laggard who is not strong enough or quick enough to get out of its 

 path. 



And when the animal dies, it dies not to drop at once into the dust 

 whence it sprang. Its dead flesh is too valuable life-building material 

 to be allowed to escape Nature's uses in any such hasty fashion. Com- 

 plete death can only be reached by the road of life. The mineral 

 world is too far off to be arrived at by a single downward step. Suc- 

 cessive steps are necessary, and every step is a living form. What we 

 call fermentation in plants is but a growth of new plants out of the 

 stuff of old ones. And putrefaction in animals is but another form of 

 the same process. 



As we have seen a host of plants growing out of the ruins of the 



