NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



ness and delightsomeness of flowers, are more or less the 

 indirect gift of insects to civilization. This line of sug- 

 gestion will not be exhausted easily, and the curious 

 may follow it independently. 



In another direction insects are and always must have 

 been benefactors. While one vast group carries the 

 fertilizing pollen from flower to flower and from plant 

 to plant, another group is destined to deal with and 

 utilize the products of decay. One is a minister of life 

 to the living; the other, although also in the end a 

 minister of life, fulfils its ministry in the realms of 

 death. For a forest is not a nursery alone; it is a cem- 

 etery also. And therein nature's agents, destined to 

 preside over the birth of life, jostle those that undertake 

 for the dead. The refuse of woodlands and fields must 

 be disposed of, and in such wise that nature's vital func- 

 tions shall not be hindered but helped. To that end she 

 has enrolled insects among her scavengers; she has set 

 them in her burial detail. Foremost in this duty are 

 the beetles; but other orders, in hosts of species and 

 innumerable individuals, unite in the grim service. 

 They seize upon the fallen plant. They gnaw its fibre. 

 They reduce it to powder. They feed upon it. They 

 shape it into domiciles and shelters for themselves and 

 their offspring. Thus they clear the forests and fields 

 of litter. 



They create the wood-mould. They are true yoke- 

 fellows with frost and snow, with rains and stormy wind, 

 and with the vital forces that grasp and assimilate the 

 products of death to feed the living. If one would 

 know somewhat of the extent and method of this ser- 

 vice, let him study thoroughly the contents of an old 

 fallen tree in a native forest. Or let him note the man- 



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