The Daisy's Pedigree. 



a wonderful world wfe should all live in if only we 

 could see it as this little beetle here sees it, half 

 buried as he is in a mighty forest of luxuriant tall 

 green moss ! Just fancy how grand and straight and 

 majestic those slender sprays must look to him, with 

 their waving, feathery branches spreading on every 

 side, a thousand times more gracefully than the long 

 boughs of the loveliest tropical palm trees on some 

 wild Jamaican hill-side. How quaint the tall capr 

 sules must appear in his eyes— great yellow seed- 

 vessels nearly as big as himself, with a conical, pink- 

 edged hood, which pops off suddenly with a bang, 

 and showers down monstrous nuts upon his head when 

 he passes beneath. Gaze closely into the moss forest, 

 as it grows here beside this smooth round stone where 

 we are sitting, and imagine you can view it as the 

 beetle views it. Put yourself in his place, and look 

 up at it towering three hundred feet above your head, 

 while you vainly strive to find your way among its 

 matted underbrush and dense labyrinths of close- 

 grown trunks. Then just look at the mighty mon- 

 sters that people it. The little red spider, magnified 

 to the size of a sheep, must be a gorgeous and strange- 

 looking creature indeed, with his vivid crimson body 

 and his mailed and jointed legs. Yonder neighbour 

 beetle, regarded as an elephant, would seem a terrible 



