190 



THE DESERT 



Fighting 

 destruction 

 by breed. 



The blue 

 and green 

 beetles. 



enough when thrust into a spider, but useless 

 again when used in defence against a cactus- 

 thrush. And this is where Nature shows her 

 absolute indifference to the life or the death of 

 the individual. She allows the bugs and beetles 

 to be slaughtered like the mackerel in the sea. 

 But she is a little more careful about preserving 

 the species. And how does she do this without 

 preserving the individual ? Why, simply by 

 increasing the number of individuals, by breed, 

 by fertility, by multiplicity. Thousands are 

 annually slaughtered ; yes, but thousands are 

 annually bred. What matter about their lives 

 or deaths provided they do not increase or de- 

 crease as a species ! 



The insects on the desert are mere flashes of 

 life pin-points of energy but not without pur- 

 pose and not without beauty. The beasts and 

 the birds may be bleached brown or gray by the 

 sun ; but the insects are many of them as gay 

 as those of the tropics. The ordinary beetles 

 that a chance turn of a stone reveals are like 

 scarabs of gold, turquoise, azurite, bronze, 

 platinum, hurrying and scurrying out of the 

 way. The tarantula-wasp, with his gorgeous 

 orange-colored body and his blue wings, is like a 

 bauble made of precious stones flickering along 



