34 The Study of Animal Life part i 



of the struggle, take a survey of the different classes of 

 animals. Everywhere they brandish weapons or are forti- 

 fied with armour. "The world," Diderot said, "is the 

 abode of the strong." Even some of the simplest 

 animals have offensive threads, prophetic of the poison- 

 ous lassoes with which jellyfish and sea- anemones are 

 equipped. Many worms have horny jaws ; crustaceans 

 have strong pincers; many insects have stings, not to 

 speak of mouth organs like surgical instruments ; spiders 

 give poisonous bites ; snails have burglars' files ; the cuttle- 

 fish have strangling suckers and parrots' beaks. Among 

 backboned animals we recall the teeth of the shark and the 

 sword of the swordfish, the venomous fangs of serpents, the 

 jaws of crocodiles, the beaks and talons of birds, the horns 

 and hoofs and canines of mammals. Now we do not say 

 that these and a hundred other weapons were from their 

 first appearance weapons, indeed we know that most of 

 them were not. But they are weapons now, and just as we 

 would conclude that there was considerable struggle in a 

 community where every man bore a revolver, we must 

 draw a similar inference from the offensive equipment of 

 animals. 



As to armoured beasts, we remember that shells of lime 

 or flint occur in many of the simplest animals, that most 

 sponges are so rich in spicules that they are too gritty to 

 be pleasant eating, that corals are polypes within shells 

 of lime, that many worms live in tubes, that the members 

 of the starfish class are in varying degrees lime-clad, that 

 crustaceans and insects are emphatically armoured animals, 

 and that the majority of molluscs live in shells. So among 

 backboned animals, how thoroughly bucklered were the 

 fishes of the old red sandstone against hardly less effect- 

 ive teeth, how the scales of modern fishes glitter, how 

 securely the sturgeon swims with its coat of bony mail ! 

 Amphibians are mostly weaponless and armourless, but 

 reptiles are scaly animals par excellence, and the tortoise, 

 for instance, lives in an almost impregnable citadel. Birds 

 soar above pursuit, and mammals are swift and strong, 

 but among the latter the armadillos have bony shields of 



