IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 351 
men have decided that these creatures are scavengers. They eat 
decaying animal and vegetable matter that would be very hurtful 
if not disposed of. These scavengers are food for larger atoms, 
and these, in turn, are food for fishes, and fishes are food for men. 
Nothing is lost. 
But don't think the wonders are all in the sea. The insect 
world has marvels as great as the sea. Take the eggs of moths 
and butterflies — tiny things, not so big as the head of a pin. 
Why, birds' eggs can't compare with them for beauty ! In color 
especially, they are exquisitely changeable. One egg is covered 
with hexagonal figures — hexagonal, you know, is six-sided — and 
at each corner is a tiny raised button. It is a beautiful blue and 
white, changeable. Another egg looks like a ripe orange; another 
like a beautiful round shell ; some are oval, with perfectly regular 
figures all over; others transparent, like glass, so the little curled- 
up worm can be seen inside. Some have beautifully made covers, 
with hinges, so that the tiny creature has only to open his door to 
get out. 
But if the eggs are interesting, the butterflies, moths, and 
insects are quite as much so. There's one moth with a regular 
finger at the end of his antenna, or feeler. Then the tongue of the 
butterfly is most exquisitely made to dip into flowers, being a per- 
fect tube, through which he can suck the sweets as easily as you 
can suck lemonade through a straw. Butterflies' wings are covered 
with feathers, lapping over each other like shingles on a roof. 
Naturalists can take off these feathers one by one, and examine 
them in their microscopes. 
Then there's a tiny fly which infests gooseberry bushes, called 
the saw-fly. Why, that atom of a creature has as perfect a saw as 
was ever cut out of steel — yes, a pair of them, and a convenient 
sheath for them in his own body, where he puts them when he 
don't want to use them. 
Possibly you have heard that each of your hairs is a hollow 
tube, with a root like an onion, and that no two animals' hairs 
are alike; some have scales like a fish, and others have different 
marks. 
Pretty soon there will be no secrets left in nature, since the 
inquisitive little microscope has begun peering into mysteries.* 
The naturalist just pulls off the skin of a rose-petal, puts it 
into his microscope, and finds out just how it lives. He finds the 
