A SHEAF OF NATURE NOTES 



typed, hence the danger of dogmatizing about living 

 things. Growing Nature will not be driven into 

 a corner. 



Well may Emerson ask — 



Why Nature loves the number five. 

 And why the star form she repeats? 



The number five rules in all the largest floral 

 families, as in the crowfoot family, the rose family 

 (which embraces all our fruit trees), the geranium 

 family, the flax family, the campanula family, the 

 convolvulus family, the nightshade family. Then 

 there is a large number of flowers the parts of 

 which go in threes, one of the best known of which 

 is the trillium. In animal life the starfish is the 

 only form I recall based on the number five. 



IV. WHY AND HOW 



One may always expect in living nature variations 

 and modifications. It is useless to ask why. 

 Nature is silent when interrogated in this way. 

 Ask her how, and you get some results. If we 

 ask, for instance, why the sting of the honey bee 

 is barbed, and those of the hornet and wasp and 

 bumble-bee, and of other wild bees, are smooth 

 like a needle, so that they can sting and sting again, 

 and live to sting another day, while the honey bee 

 stings once at the cost of its life; or why only one 

 species of fish can fly; or why one kind of eel has 



165 



