262 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



you say will be in some sort a demonstration of His 

 power whose hand formed it, for the skill of the 

 craftsman is exhibited more in the minuteness and 

 delicacy of his workmanship than in the size of what 

 he makes. He who stretched out the infinite firma- 

 ment, and hollowed the bed of the sea, pierced the tiny 

 sting of the bee for the ejection of its poison." 



The astron<:»mer who looks up toward the unfath- 

 omable depths of space with the aid of his costly in- 

 struments sees no more of creation than is to be 

 found in a patch of living, velvety moss at the foot of 

 a forest tree. In such humble and obscure localities 

 exist little families, communities, and nations that 

 carry on the business of life in their own queer fash- 

 ion, which nevertheless affords many parallels to hu- 

 man life and man's way of doing things. Like us, 

 these pygmy peoples have their governments, their 

 wars, their children, and their homes to look after; 

 they have servants, household pets, and police ; they 

 are cattle-raisers, farmers, hunters, and fishers, and 

 practice all the handicrafts of men. 



Take, for example, the paper-makers. While the 

 rest of mankind were writing imperishable thoughts 

 on all sorts of clumsy makeshifts, the pith of reeds, 

 cut spirally and flattened by pressure, leather, the leaves 

 of palm trees, wood, stone, clay, and what not, the Chi- 

 nese painted their tiresome treatises on paper ; but 

 even they did not first invent paper. Long before 

 they discovered how to make it the wasp was manu- 

 facturing a firm and durable article of this valuable 

 substance, " by very much the same process," says 



