FIELD AND STUDY 



builder and shaper of the surface of the globe, and 

 the key to all life that moves upbn it. It has been 

 through the heavenly circuit ; it has been a breath, 

 a painted cloud, a trembling dewdrop; it has been 

 the lair of the lightning; it has pulsed in the heart 

 of the storm; it has fertilized the hills; it has eroded 

 the rocks; it has been the giver of life and the giver 

 of death. 



With the sun at one side and the earth at the 

 other, what a tremendous and, on the whole, bene- 

 ficent elemental machine is set going! Noiseless, 

 exhaustless, all-powerful, wound up by the primal 

 impulse that set the worlds in motion, it will not run 

 down till the worlds become sterile with the lapse of 

 geologic and astronomic time. 



§ 

 Who or what taught the birds; both parents and 

 nestlings, to practice sanitary measures about their 

 nests? The young of all kinds that I know of never 

 defile the nest till they leave it? and the parents 

 are diligent in waiting upon them before that time. 

 No more regular is the opening of the mouth of the 

 young for food than is the movement which indi- 

 cates to the parent that the refuse of the food is to 

 be disposed of. These sanitary ^precautions are a 

 part of the primal, fundamental: paternal and ma- 

 ternal solicitude over the well-being of living things 

 that pervades all nature. This solicitude keeps the 

 balance of the account on the side of life. 

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