42 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Cha 



antennae would be developed in the pupa, the foot, the wing, or 

 other organ was defective in the perfect insect. In like manner 

 it constantly happens that human character when mature 

 exhibits the defacement of injuries done to it in its earliest 

 stages. We can trace imperfect fidelity, imperfect honesty, 

 imperfect truthfulness, and many other blemishes in the dis- 

 positions of our friends, to the unfortunate injuries inflicted 

 upon various sides of their character by nurses, parents, teachers, 

 or companions in the early days of its development. MU. 



Character and Circumstances. 



Man ought not to be the creature of circumstances, you say ; 

 but, as a matter of fact, you must admit that he is so. The 

 vacillating man, the firm man, the suspicious man, the brave 

 man, are they not all very much what circumstances have made 

 them? Circumstances are like the soil, and men are like 

 roots. The composition of the soil, like the circumstances 

 of social life, varies singularly in different parts of the 

 globe. In order that every point of tfye surface of the 

 earth should be covered with vegetation, and that no part 

 of it should be without that incomparable adornment, roots 

 must take very varying shapes in order to accommodate them- 

 selves to these varieties in the composition of the soil. In one 

 place the soil is hard and stony, heavy or light, formed of sand 

 or clay ; in another it is dry or moist ; elsewhere it is exposed 

 to the heat of a burning sun, or swept on the heights by the 

 violence of the winds and atmospheric currents ; sometimes it 

 is sheltered from these movements of the wind in the depth of 

 some warm valley. Boots, hard and woody, separated into 

 strong ramifications, yet finely divided at their termination, are 

 requisite for mountain plants whose roots are to live in the 

 midst of rocks or between the stones, in order that they may 

 penetrate between the chinks of the rocks, and cling to them 

 with sufficient force to resist the violence of hurricanes and 

 other aerial tempests. Straight tap-roots and slightly crouching 

 plants are fit for light and permeable soils. They would not 

 suit close, clayey, and shallow soils. Such districts are suitable 

 for plants whose roots stand horizontally just under the surface 

 of the soil. So the circumstances in which some men can 



