visible to the naked eye. There is as 
much truth as poetry in the lines of 
Byron, “The very dust we tread upon 
was once alive.” These creatures 
lived and died just as their represen- 
tatives do to-dav. And we find that 
after the rush and hush ot life is past 
the carcass of each one on mother 
ocean’s bed. Then nature as if greiv- 
ing the extinction of that flame that 
cannnt be re lit, quietly and steadily 
covers the remains from sight. Dust 
to dust and ashes to ashes, was spoken 
by nature ages before man was born 
to speak at all. T. C. 
With regard to nature’s preference 
for the “coarse and brutal elements,” 
we are unable to share the opinion of 
our contributor, and would point out 
that whereas most of tile larger verte- 
brate types of past ages have become 
extinct, it is only the minute forms, 
such as the foraminifera, which have 
survived unchanged to the present 
day. These, by no stretch of imag= 
ination, can be termed “coarse and 
brutal!” If we may state our own 
opinion, it has always seemed to us 
that^he struggle for existence so far 
from being synonymous with “vio- 
lence and bloodshed,” was rather the 
reverse in its broader aspects, and 
that those organisms succeeded which 
u’ere most in harmony with their en- 
vironment and had least necessity for 
doing violence to their contempora- 
ries. In the case of the sharks and 
the small fish, if the swiftest and 
strongest sharks survive because they 
are better able to catch their prey, it 
is also plain that the fish which can 
most easily escape them will also sur- 
vive, and in the long run their rela* 
tive positions wilt not be materially 
altered. So that whatever skill the 
sharks acquire in catching fish, they 
will always have the same difficulty 
in obtaining food, and specialization 
in other directions will be almost im- 
possible. Ed. 
INJURIOUS INSECTS OF CUSTER COUNTY. 
The large flat headed pine-borer, 
(Chalcophora virginiensis.) — This is 
the larva of a fine beetle which is oc- 
casionally found near Swift creek, at 
the lower edge of the pine timber. 
The la%va we have not met with, but 
according to Packard, it is a flat-head- 
ed, white grub, which bores into the 
sap-wood of pines, girdling the trees. 
The track of the grub begins as a nar- 
row and shallow groove on the sur- 
face of the wood, vvhich is irregularly 
wavy, and gradually increases as the 
larva grows, ending in a large hole 
where it becomes a pupa, from which 
the perfect beetle emerges in due time. 
The beetle is an inch or more in 
length, oblong in shape, and in color 
brassy, at first sight looking almost 
black. The under side of the body 
is sparingly covered with short whitish 
down. We have two other pine bee- 
tles in western Custer county, called 
Criocephalus agrestis and Rhagium 
lineatum. Thejlatter is the most com- 
mon, and forms part of the insect 
food which Nuthatches may be seen 
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