The Nature Library 



doors or windows ; it affords no mental satisfaction, or illumin- 

 ation, or aesthetic pleasure ; it is mainly pottering with dry, unim- 

 portant facts and details. Do you know the edelweiss of our 

 own matchless arbutus after you have merely analyzed and 

 classified them ? No more than you know a man after having 

 weighed and measured him. The function of things is always 

 interesting. What do they do ? How do they pay their way in 

 the rigid economy of nature ? How do they survive ? How does 

 the bulb of the common fawn-lily 1 get deeper and deeper into the 

 ground each year ? Why does the wild ginger hide its blossom 

 when nearly all other plants flaunt theirs ? Why are the plants of 

 the common mouse-ear (antennaria) 2 always in groups, one sex 

 here, another there, as if prohibited from mingling by some 

 moral code in nature ? Why do nearly all our trees have a twist 

 to the right or the left hard woods one way, and soft woods the 

 other? Why do the roots of trees flow through the ground like 

 "runnels of molten metal," often separating and uniting again, 

 while the branches are thrust out in right lines or curves ? Why 

 is our common yellow birch more often than any other tree 

 planted upon a rock ? Why do oaks or chestnuts so often spring 

 up where a pine or hemlock forest has been cleared away ? Why 

 does lightning so commonly strike a hemlock tree or a pine or an 

 oak, and rarely or never a beach ? Why does the bolt sometimes 

 scatter the tree about, and at others only plow a channel down 

 its trunk ? Why does the bumblebee complain so loudly when 

 working upon certain flowers ? Why does the honey-bee lose the 

 sting when it stings a person, while the wasp, the hornet, and 

 the bumblebee do not ? How does the chimney-swallow get the 

 twigs it builds its nest with ? From what does the hornet make 

 its paper ? 



One of Herbert Spencer's questions was, Why do animals 

 and birds of prey have their eyes in front, and others, as sheep 

 and domestic fowl, on the side of the head ? Man, then, by the 

 position of his eyes belongs to the predaceous animals. I have 

 never been greatly interested in spiders, but I have always 

 wanted to know how a certain spider managed to stretch her 

 cable squarely across the road in the woods about my height from 

 the ground ? Why are mud turtles so wild ? Why is the excre- 



1 The adder's tongue. 



2 Everlasting. 



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