SOME ECONOMICS OF NATURE. 25 



process of extermination of the decomposing matter. No sooner 

 does an organism animal or plant part with vitality and become as 

 the "senseless clod," than thousands of minute organisms the 

 "germs" of popular science make it their habitation and their 

 home. The process of putrefaction, unsavoury as it may be, is really 

 Nature's way of picking the once living body to pieces, of disposing it 

 in the most economical way. So much of it is converted into gas, 

 which, mingling with the air, feeds the green plants as we have noted. 

 So much of the dead frame is slowly rendered into nothingness by 

 the attack of the microscopic plants which are the causes of decom- 

 position. Nature says to these lower organisms, " There is your 

 food. In nourishing yourselves, accomplish my further work of rid- 

 ding the earth of yon dead material." And so much, lastly, of the 

 once living frame assuming it to have been that of the higher animal 

 as is of mineral nature, and therefore resists mere decay, will in due 

 time be dissolved away by the rains and moisture, and be carried into 

 the soil, to enter into new and varied combinations in the shape of 

 minerals which go to feed plants. Shakespeare must surely have 

 possessed some inkling of such a round of natural economics when 

 we find him saying 



Imperial Coesar, dead and lurn'd to clay, 

 May stop a hole to keep the wind away' 

 Oh ! that that earth which kept the world in awe, 

 Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw. 



Continuing the study, we may see yet further glimpses of the 

 great system of general regulation which guards Nature from over- 

 drawing her accounts in connection with the arrangement of living 

 things. Not only in beings of high degree, but in animals of low 

 estate, do we meet with illustrations of the economy of power and 

 the saving of needless expenditure of force and energy which Dame 

 Nature practises. The study of human anatomy, which of course is 

 one in many points with the comparative science as applied to lower 

 life, reveals not a few instructive examples of this saving tendency in 

 life's ways. The human head, for example, is nicely balanced on 

 the spine. Compared with heads of lower type, this equipoise 

 forms a prominent feature of man's estate. The head-mass of dog, 

 horse, or elephant requires to be tied on, as it were, to the spine. 

 Ligaments and muscular arrangements of complex nature perform 

 their part in securing that the front extremity of these forms should 

 be safely adjusted. But in man there is an absence of effort apparent 

 in Nature's ways of securing the ^desired end. The erect posture, 

 too, is adjusted and arranged for on principles of neat economy. 

 The type of body is the same as in lower life. Humanity appears 

 before us as a modification, an evolution, but in no sense a new 

 creation. Man rises from his " forelegs " arms being identical, be 



