NATURE AND NATURAL HISTORY 



both her excesses and her shortcomings are only 

 such from our point of view — the point of view of 

 the petty economies with which om* Hves are bomid 

 up. We measure Nature's excesses and failures by 

 standards of our own. "Who heaps his measure 

 spills his wine," says one of our minor poets, but 

 Nature's wine, though spilled, is not lost. Another 

 cup is ready to catch it. "If my bark sinks 't is to 

 another sea," sings a Concord poet, but only Nature 

 can say this. Her loss in one sphere is a gain in an- 

 other. A few years ago the measure of insect-life was 

 overfull; the tent-caterpillars were fast becoming a 

 plague, and the larvse of other insects were devas- 

 tating the woods and gardens and fruit-lands. Then 

 came a wet, cold May and the germs of these pests 

 were nipped in the egg; they did not hatch, or, if 

 hatched, they failed to mature; and thus our or- 

 chards and forests are greatly the gainers. The in- 

 sect-eating birds have suffered, but vegetation has 

 profited. 



§ 



The events and characters of history do not ap- 

 pear in ordered sequence any more than they do in 

 nature, or in the physical history of the globe. There 

 are slumps, lapses, delays, waste. The seasons, as we 

 name them, follow one after another, but there are 

 set-backs, cruel frosts, or unseasonable heats, or 

 droughts. Yet the tide of the year sweeps on. The 

 race of man has progressed through blood and crime 



309 



