188 SPRING. 



pillar, which feeds on the leaves of plants till it attains 

 its full size, but which then forms its cocoon, and is 

 changed into a chrysalis, under a dead shelter, as a 

 projecting stone in the wall or the lintel of a door or 

 window, be placed upon the ground at different periods 

 of its age, its conduct will be very different. If it be 

 in an early stage, it will find its way to a growing 

 plant, and climb the stem ; but if it be full grown it 

 will make its way to the wall. The conduct in those 

 cases is as rational and perfect as if the little animal 

 had had the experience of a thousand years, and yet 

 it is clear that experience or knowledge of any sort 

 can have nothing to do in the matter. 



In the vegetable tribes where the present race has 

 even less to do in the care of the future, the prepara- 

 tion for that future is still more abundant, so that the 

 care taken by the general law increases in proportion 

 as the power of the individual to care for its progeny 

 diminishes. With the animals which, in the language 

 of the vulgar, are called perfect, there is but one mode 

 of production, and the life is, as one would say, local- 

 ized, and demands the whole system before it can be 

 called into action. A wound or an injury in one part 

 is felt through the whole, and if any considerable por- 

 tion be removed, there is not any power in the animal 

 by which it can be reproduced. Connected with this, 

 there is one curious distinction : if a portion, a little 

 portion, be eroded by mechanical means, or by a mi- 

 neral or vegetable virus, it is replaced, though a scar 

 may be left ; but when the erosion is produced by a 

 diseased action of the system, by an animal virus, such 

 as that of scrophula or variola, the pit or vacancy is 



