(" Gxxxi, ) 
microscopes, etc. Then there is the TZeleological taste which 
—to parody Wordsworth’s phrase—-makes the “heart leap up 
when it beholds”’ anything in Nature which has the appearance 
of Design. We are all, I believe, teleologists of some school 
or other at heart, and inclined, I will not say to exaggerate, 
but at any rate to lay full stress on any phenomenon—how- 
ever we account for it—in which it seems evident that a 
structure is advantageous to its possessor and suitable for 
the uses that are actually made of it. Lastly, I notice a taste 
which may be called the Anthropomorphic obsession—the 
readiness ingrained in human intelligence to see its own 
productions imitated or anticipated by Nature—that which 
makes us pleased and even eager to be told of lower animals 
practising human occupations, and employing tools or other 
appliances like our own—Fishes which are Anglers or Elec- 
tricians ; Communism, Parasitism, and Commensalism among all 
sorts of lowly animals ; Insects accepting or refusing Sovereigns 
to reign over them, and paying court to them when accepted ; 
masons, carpenters, and upholsterers among the Bees; Ants 
which maintain soldiers, kidnap slaves, build towns, store 
provisions, grow vegetables, keep cows and milk them ; Insects 
armed with rapiers, broadswords, poison-flasks and explosives ; 
digging pit-falls; weaving nets; carrying umbrellas, lamps, 
scent-bottles, fiddles and fiddlesticks, spurs, combs and brushes, 
instruments like those of human surgeons, or tools like those 
of human workmen. Sometimes, no doubt, such stories rather 
amuse than seriously interest us. But even amusement is a 
kind of interest, and the things which are able to amuse a 
man are no bad indication of his normal mental tastes. 
Now what, meaning no offence, I shall for the moment call 
the popular legend of The Sawfly and its Saws, seems to 
me to appeal to every one of those obsessions or tastes of the 
normal human intelligence to which I have alluded. 
The phenomenon described in that legend, when first related 
to any one, must certainly appear surprising. Nor is it one 
which is seen so often as to have become familiar to us and 
no longer paradoxical, The almost inconceivable delicacy. 
minuteness, and elaboration of the saws is another point which 
is constantly pressed upon our notice. And the general con- 
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