98 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



to the almost inconceivably complicated 

 ones of civilized life, these creatures, 

 most of them at least, seem to be leading 

 essentially the same kind of lives that 

 they led hundreds of thousands of years 

 ago. 



They have powers which neither man 

 nor any other mammal ever dreamed of 

 having. 



Some have powers of flight which en- 

 able them to sail a thousand miles before 

 the wind. Others can jump a hundred 

 times their own length. One of these 

 monsters can manufacture a liquid rope 

 as easily as mammals produce milk, and 

 with it weave aerial nets to trap their 

 pray, or by attaching it can drop from 

 the dizziest heights without danger, and 

 when the rope has served its purpose 

 they eat it up. 



Their weapons of defense are compar- 

 able to the deadly ones that only poison- 

 ous serpents have. If they were larger 

 they would be in fact what legend pic- 

 tures the dragons to have been. 



The unthinkably old germ plasm of 

 these species produces creatures which 

 act with a precision of purpose and a de- 

 gree of absolute self-sacrifice which can- 

 not fail to stagger the most conscientious 

 of the human race. They might even 

 make one wonder whether the fulfillment 

 of biological life does not consist in sac- 

 rifice of the individual for the good of 

 the species to which it belongs. 



Certain it is that human thought is now 

 drifting away from the consideration of 

 the individual and is coming to pay more 

 attention to the species and the things 

 which affect its development. This is a 

 picture-book produced in the playtime 

 hours of two busy people. It is a collec- 

 tion of actual photographs of a few of 

 the small-sized monsters which inhabit 



the tall grass, the flower garden and veg- 

 etable garden, the pines and oaks of a 

 place in the woods of Maryland. 



If it should show to others a world of 

 new and fascinating things it would be 

 simply doing for them what the taking 

 of the photographs has done for us — 

 opened the door into a realm of real life, 

 of a terrible struggle to live, which is as 

 full of fascination as the dragon tales of 

 old Japan. At the same time it makes us 

 realize what vast and yet untouched 

 fields of material value lie in the efforts 

 man is making to outwit and circumvent, 

 and even perhaps to exterminate, such of 

 the monsters as encroach upon his own 

 environment. 



If you compare these photographs 

 with those to be found in most books on 

 insects you will find that they differ in 

 several particulars. They are all either 

 front views or side views of the crea- 

 tures, whereas those in books on ento- 

 mology are generally views from above. 

 Imagine a book on the horse in which 

 only top views Avere shown, or a guide to 

 a zoological garden illustrated with the 

 various wild beasts photographed from 

 above. It is true that, being so much 

 larger, we generally look down at these 

 monsters ; but a mouse also generally 

 runs along the floor or under our feet, 

 and yet a zoologist pictures it from the 

 same point of view that he does an ele- 

 phant. Crows look down upon us, yet I 

 imagine that no one will admit that the 

 crow's impression of human beings is as 

 correct or as interesting as that which 

 we have of ourselves. Every creature 

 has a right to be portrayed from its own 

 level, and the reason these photographs 

 are unusual is because they carry out 

 this principle and do each creature jus- 

 tice. 



