A JUNGLE CLEARING 47 



Christmas sweetshops — white at the base and 

 shading from pale salmon to the deepest of pinks. 

 This exquisite tapestry, whose beauties were nor- 

 mally forever hidden as well from the blind grub 

 as from the outside world, was the ambrosia all 

 unwittingly provided by the antagonism of the 

 plant; the nutrition of resentment, the food of 

 defiance; and day by day the grub gradually ate 

 his way from one end to the other of his suite, 

 laying a normal, healthful physical foundation 

 for his future aerial activities. 



The natural history of galls is full of romance 

 and strange unrealities, but to-day it meant to 

 me only a renewed instance of an opportunity 

 seized and made the most of; the success of the 

 indirect, the unreasonable — the long chance 

 which so few of us humans are willing to take, al- 

 though the reward is a perpetual enthusiasm for 

 the happening of the moment, and the honest 

 gambler's joy for the future. How much more 

 desirable to acquire merit as a footless grub in 

 the heart of a home, erected and precariously 

 nourished by a worthy opponent, with a future 

 of unnumbered possibilities, than to be a queen- 

 mother in nest or hive — cared-for, fed, and 

 cleansed by a host of slaves, but with less pros- 



