THE DEVELOPMENT OF ORGANISMS 815 



side of the ant regime, but the instinctive industry displayed is 

 incontestably admirable! "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider 

 her ways and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, 

 provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the 

 harvest." 



The industry of animals is largely concerned with bread-and- 

 butter, but it has also in many cases to do with making shelters and 

 nests. On the whole, life swings on two pivots — "hunger" and 

 "love", both in inverted commas. As Goethe said long ago for 

 mankind, so we may ask and answer for animals: "Why do the 

 people so strive and cry? They will have food and they will have 

 children, and they will bring them up as well as they can." Such is 

 life, through and through. 



Since industry has much to do with exploiting the resources of 

 Nature, it is not surprising that there should be among animals the 

 coimterparts of human activities. Thus there are all sorts of pre- 

 human huntsmen : quick himters, like fox and eagle ; stealthily slow 

 hunters, like the wild cat and the python; lurkers like the young 

 ant-lion, buried up to the jaws at the foot of his pit-fall in the sand, 

 or like the young tiger-beetle who sinks a shaft and waits within it 

 until an inquisitive ant steps on his head, which serves as the trap- 

 door. Then with explosive violence the head is jerked upwards and 

 backwards, and the victim is crushed against the edge of the shaft. 

 Among spiders may be found the past-masters in snaring. 



Some animals hunt alone, like the otter and the subterranean 

 mole ; others hunt in packs, like the wolves in winter. Some himt in 

 daylight, like most of the birds of prey, and some in the dark, like 

 the owl and the hedgehog. Hunting fades into fishing, and again 

 we have the swift fishers, like seals and otters, and the slow fishers, 

 like the herons waiting pensively by the side of the lake. Pelicans 

 make a living seine-net, driving the fish before them as they wade 

 inwards in a crescent towards the shore. Some of the caddis- worms 

 make the neatest imaginable bag-nets by which they catch what 

 the stream brings down. Some fishes in the dark abysses seem to 

 use luminescent lures. 



The discovery of the underworld by earthworms to begin with, 

 and later on by centipedes, millipedes, sexton beetles, blindworms, 

 burrowing snakes, moles, and other tunnelling mammals, has im- 

 plied much in the way of mining; but the analogy rather breaks 

 down, since the animal miners do not bring wealth to the surface as 

 men do. And even when we recognise that earthworms manure the 

 soil with leaves, and plough it very effectively, they are not agricul- 

 turalists in the sense of making things grow. Even the Agricultural 

 Ant of Texas is treated rather as a joke for tourists. 



There is no doubt, however, that the leaf -cutting ants cultivate 

 in their underground cities a unique fungus, grown on green beds of 



