454 WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS CHAP. 



saving light which they inveuted is gleaming above the hidden 

 rock, for the benefit of all, to expose the danger of the sea. Thus 

 with one hand we save, with the other we destroy. 



This has been the principle since the original creation. The 

 civilised world boasts of its progress in civilisation, and of the 

 modern triumphs of knowledge, science, and general education ; 

 but those countries which command respect in the councils of the 

 world are the possessors of the big battalions. " Force," the great 

 law of nature, will assert its power, and rule. 



It is a relief to enjoy nature in her wild and unrestricted 

 solitudes far away from the intrusion of mankind ; it is there that 

 we see her in the fullest charms. Although we know that one 

 species preys upon another, we do not feel it, as the painful scenes 

 are not apparent ; we see a giant trunk prostrated on the ground, 

 covered with moss and lichens, and brightened by many-coloured 

 fungi ; we forget that these are preying upon the dead body of the 

 once glorious tree. We remove the rotten bark, and disturb panic- 

 stricken ants and beetles, together with the larvae of many other 

 insects ; it hardly occurs to us that they also are attacking the 

 remains of a dead giant. A continual change is taking place. A 

 bird drops the seed of a bo tree (Ficus reli<jiosa) upon an ancient 

 temple ; it germinates, and by degrees the roots penetrate through 

 a thousand unknown crevices in search of moisture and support. 

 The young tree has determined to live upon the ruin of that 

 temple ; in the course of time the expansion of the growing roots 

 splits and tears asunder the great mass of masonry. 



In the same manner, a seed of the bo dropped into the huge 

 forked centre of some great forest monarch, which contains the 

 first signs of rottenness within, quickly germinates, and takes 

 complete possession of the old trunk ; it drives its insidious roots 

 down into the very centre, and subsists upon the destruction of its 

 victim. These are among the changes that prove the rule of 

 superior force throughout every portion of the earth ; and in every 

 drop of water that is sufficiently impure to have generated animal- 

 cules. In that one drop, the microscope will show the monsters 

 of the tiny ocean, invisible to the naked eye, but the strong are 

 devouring the weak, as the rotifera swallow down the helpless 

 victims in unresisting shoals. There is in the ferocious instincts 

 of the microscopic insect the same fury of attack as in the cruel 

 shark, although unseen by the unaided human eye. The spider 

 emulates the fisherman in the construction of its net, both guided 

 by natural laws, reason, instinct, and desire, to catch and kill 

 something that will enable it to subsist. 



