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426 ZOOLOGY. 
the young rattlesnake is not provided with so large or so loud a 
rattle as the full grown snake, as tending to disprove the mimetic 
and protective uses of this appendage—* The young requiring 
greater facilities for obtaining food, and more extensive measures 
for protection.” : 
Were this accepted as satisfactory reasoning, a similar conclu- 
sion might be reached in regard to a multitude of animals, for 
instance, all those having horns, as the deer, goat, antelope, etc., - 
in which the young are unarmed: yet the protective uses of the 
` horns cannot be questioned. With many of those animals, the 
female is invariably destitute of these appehdages, yet we might 
suppose, from her position as the immediate protector of her 
offspring, that she required to be most fully provided in this 
respect. | 
The truth is that, to a remarkable extent, the young of most 
creatures are little else than the food of other animals ; often they 
are the food of even their own species, if not of their own parents. 
Nothing is more emphatically proclaimed, on every side, than the 
fact (put into such divine language by Tennyson) that, N ature is 
careless of the individual, however careful she may be of the type. 
She forms a thousand seeds, but only one germinates and pro- 
duces its kind. We have, too, the mystery of the pollen, which 
I have watched for years with wonder, where, in one casé, with 
apparently miserly penuriousness, she doles out the precious life- 
giving atom just sufficient to fecundate, while, in other instances, as 
if glorying in her prodigality, she scatters the golden dust as freely ` ' 
as some spendthrift heir squanders the hoarded wealth of his 
ancestors. - 
` Yet I have perfect faith that “ nothing is lost” — nothing 
wasted ; but that all has a governing purpose, circumscribing to 
the very nicest minutia the exact proportion requisite for the 
result ; albeit hidden from our purblind eyes. We know so many 
of Nature’s delicate adjustments and wonderful combinations that, 
surely, we can have perfect confidence that, even when all is dark 
to us, her ways are Wisdom’s ways. We bring out our clumsy 
balances, but the volatile aroma escapes us and will not be 
weighed. , y 
As to the frequency of the young animal not being provided with 
the protective weapons or appliances of the full grawn one, abun- 
dant material can be found, from the oyster and lobster, the young 
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E E E Sr E r E er O nae” AN 
S Se dy e 
