The Story of the Universe. Volume 4 (of 4)

Volume Iii Can Be Found in Project Gutenberg At:

1, Callimorpha; 2, Prionus Cervicornus; 3, 6, Licæna; 4. Oryctes Hercules; 5, Lucanus Cervus; 7, Zeryntina; 8, Lithosia; 9, Arctia; 10, Cynthia; 11, Papilio Œnora; 12, Oryctes Nasicornis; 13, Melolontha; 14, Papilio Machaon; 15, Goliathus; 16, Ditiscus; 17, Leptura; 18, Geotrupes; 19, 20, Vanessa; 21, Urania]

THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE

Told by Great Scientists and Popular Authors

COLLECTED AND EDITED

By ESTHER SINGLETON

Author of “Turrets, Towers and Temples,” “Wonders of Nature,” “The World’s Great Events,” “Famous Paintings,” Translator of Lavignac’s “Music Dramas of Richard Wagner”

FULLY ILLUSTRATED

Volume Iv

THE EARTH’S CREATURES: FAUNA

THE CURRENT LITERATURE PUBLISHING CO., NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1905 P. F. COLLIER & SON

ILLUSTRATIONS

Butterflies and other Insects Frontispiece

Radiolaria Opposite p. 1327

Curious Zoophytes ” 1375

Fishes ” 1423

Shells ” 1495

Types of Extinct Fishes, Shells, and Crustacea ” 1543

Birds ” 1591

Fairy Flies ” 1639

American Reptiles ” 1687

CONTENTS

OMNIPRESENCE OF LIFE. George Henry Lewes 1285

THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. Thomas H. Huxley 1296

THE FOUR CLASSES. Baron Cuvier 1301

DEEP SEA FAUNA. Lord Kelvin 1304

“THE MIMIC FIRES OF OCEAN.” G. Clarke Nuttall 1320

THE JELLY-FISH AND OTHER HYDROZOA. P. Martin Duncan 1324

FISHES. Andrew Wilson 1337

WONDERS OF THE SHORE. Charles Kingsley 1357

CRABS, PRAWNS, AND LOBSTERS. Philip Henry Gosse 1374

REPTILES. Peter Mark Roget 1379

THE CLASSIFICATION AND ORIGIN OF INSECTS. Lord Avebury 1401

INSECTS: THEIR WINGS, STINGS, EARS, AND EYES. Philip Henry Gosse 1425

FAIRY FLIES. Fred. Enock 1449

INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS. Andrew Wilson 1458

STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. Charles Darwin 1464

NATURAL SELECTION. Charles Darwin. 1482

MAMMALIA. Baron Cuvier 1513

ZOOLOGICAL ZONES. Sir Richard Owen 1520

GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. William Hughes 1535

CETACEA. Peter Mark Roget 1561

HUNTING AND FISHING OF ANIMALS. Frédéric Houssay 1565

THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT. W. H. Hudson 1577

BIRDS. J. Arthur Thomson 1582

MIMICRY. David Robertson 1593

DWELLINGS. Frederic Houssay 1601

MAN’S FIRST APPEARANCE. Boyd Dawkins 1647

MAN’S PRIMITIVE CONDITION. Duke of Argyl 1656

RACES OF MANKIND. Wiliam Hughes 1667

THE HUMAN RACE. Louis Figuier 1679

INDEX 1695

THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE (VOLUME FOUR)

THE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE

OMNIPRESENCE OF LIFE --GEORGE HENRY LEWES

Come with me, and lovingly study Nature, as she breathes, palpitates, and works under myriad forms of Life-forms unseen, unsuspected, or unheeded by the mass of ordinary men. Our course may be through park and meadow, garden and lane, over the swelling hills and spacious heaths, beside the running and sequestered streams along the tawny coast, out on the dark and dangerous reefs, or under dripping caves and slippery edges. It matters little where we go: everywhere--in the air above, the earth beneath, and waters under the earth--we are surrounded with Life. Avert your eyes a while from our human world, with its ceaseless anxieties, its noble sorrow, poignant, yet sublime, of conscious imperfection aspiring to higher states, and contemplate the calmer activities of that other world with which we are so mysteriously related. I hear you exclaim,

“The proper study of mankind is man;”

nor will I pretend, as some enthusiastic students seem to think, that

“The proper study of mankind is cells;”

but agreeing with you, that man is the noblest study, I would suggest that under the noblest there are other problems which we must not neglect. Man himself is imperfectly known, because the laws of universal Life are imperfectly known. His life forms but one grand illustration of Biology--the science of Life--as he forms but the apex of the animal world.

Our studies here will be of Life, and chiefly of those minuter or obscurer forms which seldom attract attention. In the air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the earth we tread on, Life is everywhere. Nature lives: every pore is bursting with Life; every death is only a new birth, every grave a cradle. And of this we know so little, think so little! Around us, above us, beneath us, that great mystic drama of creation is being enacted, and we will not even consent to be spectators! Unless animals are obviously useful or obviously hurtful to us, we disregard them. Yet they are not alien, but akin. The Life that stirs within us stirs within them. We are all “parts of one transcendent whole.” The scales fall from our eyes when we think of this; it is as if a new sense had been vouchsafed to us, and we learn to look at Nature with a more intimate and personal love.

Life everywhere! The air is crowded with birds--beautiful, tender, intelligent birds--to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety, the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects--those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms, from the animalcule, so small that one hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the seas is alive with polypes, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures, and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets.

Life everywhere! on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts, all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree, or shrub, or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labor. We pick up a fallen leaf, and if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting there development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. This same microscope reveals that the blood-rain suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals (Monas prodigiosa); and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night owe their color to the marvelous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant (Protococcus nivalis). The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, or our ink, and disfigures our damp walls, is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-colored fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel plows her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jeweled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.

Nor does the vast procession end here. Our very mother-earth is formed of the débris of life. Plants and animals which have been built up its solid fabric. We dig downward thousands of feet below the surface, and discover with surprise the skeletons of strange, uncouth animals, which roamed the fens and struggled through the woods before man was. Our surprise is heightened when we learn that the very quarry itself is mainly composed of the skeletons of microscopic animals; the flints which grate beneath our carriage wheels are but the remains of countless skeletons. The Apennines and Cordilleras, the chalk cliffs so dear to homeward-nearing eyes--these are the pyramids of bygone generations of atomies. Ages ago these tiny architects secreted the tiny shells which were their palaces; from the ruins of these palaces we build our Parthenons, our St. Peters, and our Louvres. So revolves the luminous orb of Life! Generations follow generations; and the Present becomes the matrix of the Future, as the Past was of the Present--the Life of one epoch forming the prelude to a higher Life.

When we have thus ranged air, earth, and water, finding everywhere a prodigality of living forms, visible and invisible, it might seem as if the survey were complete. And yet it is not so. Life cradles within Life. The bodies of animals are little worlds, having their own animals and plants. A celebrated Frenchman has published a thick octavo volume devoted to the classification and description of The Plants which Grow on Men and Animals; and many Germans have described the immense variety of animals which grow on and in men and animals; so that science can boast of a parasitic Flora and Fauna. In the fluids and tissues, in the eye, in the liver, in the stomach, in the brain, in the muscles, parasites are found, and these parasites have often their living parasites in them!

We have thus taken a bird’s-eye view of the field in which we may labor. It is truly inexhaustible. We may begin where we please, we shall never come to an end; our curiosity will never slacken.

“And whosoe’er in youth Has through ambition of his soul given way To such desires, and grasp’d at such delights, Shall feel congenial stirrings late and long.”

As a beginning, get a microscope. If you can not borrow, boldly buy one. Few purchases will yield you so much pleasure; and, while you are about it, do, if possible, get a good one. Spend as little money as you can on accessory apparatus and expensive fittings, but get a good stand and good glasses. Having got your instrument, bear in mind these two important trifles--work by daylight, seldom or never by lamplight; and keep the unoccupied eye open. With these precautions you may work daily for hours without serious fatigue to the eye.

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