The Evolution of Arms and Armor. 167 



Then, too, the imperfection of their outward armor must 

 have had a very important influence in driving the weak 

 into that mightiest of all military arts, mightier than any 

 tusk or claw or individual accoutrement, co-operative 

 effort. All animals even of the same species, organized to 

 prey on each other, would naturally be foes at first, and 

 inclined to live apart. Outward shelter meant only the 

 continuance of this separation. "What society could the 

 oyster and the clam have with each other ? What need of 

 mutual assistance, the Icthyosaur and Megalosaur, fifty or 

 a hundred feet long, and panoplied all over with thick 

 plates ? It was only the unprotected that would be under 

 the necessity of overcoming their individual enmities and 

 combining against their protected foes ; only the outwardly 

 weak who would be apt learners of the lesson that union is 

 strength. Once learned it became not only a mighty 

 weapon of attack and defense, but the teacher of innumer- 

 able other things. The association it involved was a 

 powerful stimulus to mind-development. Liking its bene- 

 fits, they grew inevitably to like the benefit-givers, that 

 is, their associates. And thus, under the wonderful 

 alchemy of Evolution, out of the crucible of animal hate 

 in this seething world of ours, stirred with tusk and claw, 

 has come, as much as there is of it, the fine gold of 

 brotherly love, the protective arms into which all weapons 

 are at last to merge. 



As plants, in their relation to the world's great food- 

 question, are necessarily the assailed rather than the assail- 

 ants, being the prey of animals, but made to get their own 

 living chiefly from unobjecting inorganic matter, their 

 armor for the most part is naturally outward and protective 

 rather than inward and offensive. It is what is found in 

 the bark of trees, the rind of fruits, the shell of nuts, the 

 beard of grains, the spines and thorns of many shrubs, and 

 in the roughness and hardness of nearly all vegetation in its 

 native state. And yet plants are not by any means en- 

 tirely destitute of what may be called offensive arms, or 

 wholly incapable, when assailed, of assailing in return. 

 Species of them are found, here and there, like the sun-dew, 

 the pitcher-plant, and the Venus fly-trap, which completely 

 turn the tables on the animal kingdom, and, instead of 

 being the eaten, are themselves the eaters, catching their 



