Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

“ As we imagined the earthworm to put on armor and become a crawfish, because we could see the earthworm so plainly inside the armor, now let us imagine the crawfish going into an oyster shell to improve his insides. He takes off his many-jointed legs and eating clippers, takes off his stalked eyes, his long finger-like feelers, shrinks into his shell, makes his shell still harder, so that it will not be easy for enemies to get in and disturb him. ”

“ There is one room for the head, one for the lungs and heart parts, one for the digestion of food.
Even in man there are only these three rooms in the body. It is as if Nature said: "There! A three-roomed house is good enough for anybody." ”

“ But, instead of having a lot of legs, like the earthworm, the crawfish has fewer legs; and these legs differ from each other, and are used for different purposes. The earthworm's legs are all alike and are all used for one purpose—to help him get along over the ground.
In the insects we see still fewer legs. Insects always have three pair of legs, while the crawfish has four pairs. Still higher up in the scale are the animals with only two pairs. You see how Nature makes fewer and fewer legs as she goes up and up? ”

“ It learned to divide the work of the plant by making organs—roots, stems, leaves, blossoms, fruits. The lowest plant is a cell, but the highest is only a multitude of cells made of the one material—protoplasm, but changed into many forms and given many kinds of work to do. From using water alone to float in, the plant learned to use earth, air, wind, insects, birds and men, to help it make and scatter its seeds, and to grow better plants. ”

“ Crawfish than Mr. Fly, doesn't come next to him in the procession. Doesn't it look as if Nature "skipped a note" when she made him?Not only in the forms of things, but in the stuff they are made of, Nature does skip. She puts lime in the shells of the crawfish and the oyster, but leaves it out of the shells of insects, which come between them. Not all insects have shells, as you know, but such of them as have shells for their backs, or shell-like scales for wings, do not have any lime in them. ”

“ There, in his shell castle, he makes better the parts he had, and makes new parts that he never had before.
Of course crawfish never do change into oysters. No animals change into each other in that way. It is more as it is in a family of boys. When they are boys they are pretty much alike, have the same plays, go to the same school—do everything pretty much alike. When they grow older and go out into the larger world, one becomes a lawyer, another a carpenter or a farmer, another a motive engineer, and so on. ”

“ And the stronger plants always have the best chance to live. They havebetter soil, or more room to grow in, or more sunshine or, something that makes them better than their brothers and sisters. So they have a chance to make better seeds. The weak plants die more easily. This is nature's way of picking out the best.
Among the flowers there were some born with deeper little pockets, so the insects could not get at the honey without covering themselves with pollen. So these flowers kept more of their honey for their own use, and made the bees and butterflies scatter their pollen. ”

“ Suppose a bee goes after honey in an apple blossom. It likes the color and the smell. So it goes to another apple blossom and another. It doesn't visit anything but apple blossoms until it goes back to the hive. Just why it does this we do not know, but very likely bees and butterflies are much like little boys and girls. When they get a taste of anything good, they like to make a meal of it. ”

“ Why do the crawfish and the oyster have lime in their shells, while the insects haven't? Think of the lives they lead and you will see the answer. If the crawfishes and the lobster didn't wear strong armor, what would happen to them in the fighting lives they lead? ”

“ The stomach, the liver, the lungs and other organs, are only inside eating tools. They divide the water, air and food up, more and more, and pass it on. It is so important to improve the inside of an animal's house, to keep up with the improvements on the outside, that Nature seems to stop all outside work for awhile to attend to this. ”

“ So the legs grow fewer in number and more useful. Think how much better it is to have two real good legs and a pair of arms, than to have as many legs as the earthworm or the "thousand legged" worm, and no arms or wings or anything like that—just legs, legs, legs.As the "outsides" of the animal get more parts, the "insides" must get more parts, too, and each of these parts must begin to do a special work. ”

“ You didn't know, perhaps, that some flowers are so much better than others of the same kind that they really are a little different. You know it is like that in human families. Lincoln was better than and different from all his own people and his neighbors. ”

“ In this way insects are kept from mixing the pollens of different plants. The traps and tricks that flowers have learned, to make the insects scatter their pollen, is interesting. Some have hair nets over the honey cups to hold the little visitor until, in his struggles, he rubs the pollen from his legs, onto the little wet buttons on the seed tube. Then they give him a little honey and let him fly away. ”

“ Thrown out on the land, the cells clung and spread into a leaf and sent down rootlets. As the cells could no longer break away and float to start new families, it grew spores and used the wind to scatter them. ”

“ X. How Plants Are Promoted to a Higher Class A long time ago people thought that flowers were given their beautiful colors and perfumes just to make the world a pleasanter place for people to live in. But now we know that everything lives for itself. ”