OUR RIVALS 147 



investigate, it was well into the heart of the field. 

 He reported that the clouds of insects reached from 

 the earth beyond the height of human vision and that 

 it was these rolling clouds that swept vegetation so 

 completely out of existence that nothing seemed to 

 be left but dust. Our meadows and corn fields in 

 New England frequently suffer severely from the lo- 

 cust. Meanwhile the cricket helps the slug, doing 

 its work a little more slyly around the roots of our 

 lettuce and our strawberries. 



I have already suggested that honey can be made 

 on the trail of the aphidae, and now let me call your 

 attention to the fact that your grasshopper makes 

 capital food for your hens. It is in this way that 

 good comes out of evil and Nature brings compen- 

 sation everywhere. Weeds really are not weeds, 

 because they have in them a power of progress 

 only we must find out what they are good for. The 

 beggar weed, which is our very best forage and hay 

 plant in the South, was for a long time held to be 

 the worst pest of the cotton field. Injurious animals 

 are on the road forward, for the most part, and even 

 the wolves have given us the collie dog. 



We are ourselves creatures of progress, and gen- 

 erally that progress is speeded, if it is not measured, 

 by our rivals that is, when we have transformed 

 them into allies. There is a fine passage in the Bible 

 which tells us that the whole creation travails to- 

 gether, waiting for its redemption in man. The 



