II 



Nature's prodigality and parsimony are ex- 

 tremes farther apart than her east and west. 

 Why should she be so lavish of interstellar 

 space, and crowd a drop of stagnant water 

 so? Why give the wide sea surface to the 

 petrels, and screw the sea-urchins into the rocks 

 on Grand Manan? Why scatter in Delaware 

 Bay a million sturgeon eggs for every one 

 hatched, while each mite of a Paramecium is 

 cut in two, and wholes made of the halves? 

 Why leave an entire forest of green, live pines 

 for a lonesome crow hermitage, and convert the 

 rottenest old stump into a submerged-tenth tene- 

 ment? 



Part of the answer, at least, is found in na- 

 ture's hatred and horror of death. She fiercely 

 refuses to have any dead. An empty heaven, a 

 lifeless sea, an uninhabited rock, a dead drop of 

 water, a dying Paramecium, are intolerable and 

 impossible. She hastens always to give them 

 life. The succession of strange dwellers to the 

 decaying trees is an instance of her universal and 

 endless effort at making matter live. 

 [261] 



