192 



THE DESERT 



of reptiles. 



Nature's 

 work all 

 purposeful. 



the yellow rattlesnake. And they have no more 

 character and perhaps less fitness for the desert 

 life than the sneaking coyote or the flattened 

 lizard which you do not admire. But why are 

 not the coyote and the lizard beautiful too ? 

 Why not the beauty of the horned toad and the 

 serpent ? Are we never to love or to admire 

 save where form and color tickle the eye ? Are 

 these forever to monopolize the name of beauty 

 and gather to themselves the world's applause ? 

 If we could but rid ourselves of the false ideas, 

 which, taken en masse, are called education, we 

 should know that there is nothing ugly under 

 the sun, save that which comes from human 

 distortion. Nature's work is all of it good, all 

 of it purposeful, all of it wonderful, all of it 

 beautiful. We like or dislike certain things 

 which may be a way of expressing our prejudice 

 or our limitation ; but the work is always per- 

 fect of its kind irrespective of human appreci- 

 ation. We may prefer the sunlight to the star- 

 light, the evening primrose to the bisnaga, the 

 antelope to the mountain-lion, the mocking-bird 

 to the lizard ; but to say that one is good and 

 the other bad, that one is beautiful and the other 

 ugly, is to accuse Nature herself of preference 

 something which she never knew. She designs 



