REASONABLE BUT UNREASONING 



from the hornets, but certain it is that they hold the 

 original patent for making paper from wood-pulp; 

 and the little spiders navigated the air before the 

 first balloon was made, and the Physalia hoisted 

 her sail long before the first seaman spread his, and 

 the ant-lion dug his pit and the carpenter-bee bored 

 his hole long before man had learned these arts. 

 Indeed, many of the arts and crafts of man exist or 

 are foreshadowed in the world of life below him. 

 There is no tool-user among the lower animals that 

 I know of, unless we regard one of the solitary 

 wasps as such when she uses a pebble with which 

 to pack down the earth over her den; but there 

 are many curious devices and makeshifts of one 

 kind and another among both plants and animals 

 for defense, for hiding, for scattering of seeds, for 

 cross-fertilization, etc. The wild creatures have all 

 been to school to an old and wise teacher. Dame 

 Nature, who has been keeping school now, as near 

 as we can calculate, for several million years. And 

 she is not an indulgent teacher, though a very pa- 

 tient one. Her rod is tooth and claw and hunger 

 and cold and drought and flood, and her penalty is 

 usually death. Her ways are not all ways of pleas- 

 antness, nor are all her paths paths of peace. 



When the animals are confronted by conditions 



made by man, then man can give them valuable 



hints. We could teach the cliff swallows better 



than to stick their mud nests on boards that have 



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