288 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Pun 



Pugnacity of Small Natures. 



Small men are generally the most pugnacious, and the same 

 circumstance is noted of small animals. Even the little weasel, 

 although sufficiently discreet when discretion will serve its pur- 

 pose, is ever ready to lay down that part of valour, and take up 

 the other. c. 



The Might of the Puny. 



Puny things have sometimes a more mighty power than large 

 ones. The chalk cliffs of southern England, which form a 

 stupendous barrier to the wild fury of the German and Atlantic; 

 Oceans ; the limestone rocks, of which immense tracts of 

 country are almost entirely composed, were not formed by the 

 gigantic remains of megatheriums, mastodons, and other extinct 

 monsters which lived and died amidst the wildest convulsions 

 of a nascent world, but by the shields and shells of inconceiv- 

 able myriads of organisms, to each individual of which the 

 stage-plate of the microscope would be as large a field for its 

 gambols as a whole country would be to one man. It is not by 

 the hurricane or the furious storm that our fairest orchards and 

 most luxuriant fields are laid waste and converted into wilder- 

 nesses of skeleton leaves and blackened withered stalks, but by 

 the ravages of the tiniest insects, and the minutest and most 

 contemptible fungi. FO. 



The Destructive Power of Puny Creatures. 



We sometimes underestimate the power of those whom we 

 consider contemptible opponents. Now, as a matter of fact, 

 the puny things of Nature are the greatest destroyers. And in 

 society it is the scandal-monger, the hypocritical religionist, the 

 splenetic obscurity, the man of little cranium and insignificant 

 name and nature, who ruin reputations and wreck -social 

 organisations. These apparently contemptible individuals in 

 their capacity for mischief are like certain beetles. The various 

 species of Hylobius are, where they abound, very injurious in 

 forests of the pine tribe, as they often quite destroy the young 

 trees. The larch, now so extensively planted for its useful 

 timber, is at times much destroyed by the Hylobius abietis. 



