EACH AFTER ITS KIND 



the music of the spring is his dry-limb drum with 

 which he seeks to attract his mate when the love 

 passion is upon him. 



Oh, these wild creatures! How clear-cut, how 

 individual, how definite they are! While every 

 individual of a species seems stamped with the 

 same die, the species themselves, even in closely 

 allied groups, are as distinct and various in their 

 lineaments and characteristics as we can well 

 conceive. Behold the order of rodents, including 

 the squirrels, the hares, the rabbits, the wood- 

 chucks, the prairie-dogs, the rats and mice, the 

 porcupines the beavers what diversity amid the 

 unity, what unlikeness amid the sameness ! It makes 

 one marvel anew at the ingenuity and inventive- 

 ness of Nature some living above ground, some 

 below, some depending upon fleetness of foot and 

 keenness of eye for safety, some upon dens and 

 burrows always near at hand; the porcupine upon 

 an armor of barbed quills, the beaver upon his 

 dam and his sharpness of sense. If they all de- 

 scended from the same original type-form, how 

 that form has branched like a tree in the fields 

 dividing and dividing and dividing again! But the 

 likeness to the tree fails when we consider that no 

 two branches are alike; in fact, that they are as 

 unlike as pears and peaches and apples and berries 

 and cherries would be on the same tree all of the 

 same family, but diverging widely in the species. 

 55 



