Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1875-04-30
Animal Wonders.

In each grain Of sand, there are marvels:
in every drop of water world. In that
great spectacle called Nature, every being
has its marked place and distinct role and
in that grand drama called life, there pre-
sides a law as harmonious as that which
rules the movement of the stars. Each
hour removes by death myriads of exist
ences, and each hour produces legions of
new lives. The highest as well as the low
est created organism consumes carbon and
wafer to support life and its duties, and it
Is not uninteresting to glance at the food.
the habits, and the ways and means, pc
culiar to some of the inferior animals.
From their petrifed elections we know
what such fossiized reptiles as the plesio-
saurus, ETC., are, and may some day be able
to discover the fish and crustacea tbev
hunted down. Animals, when not living
by their own respectable efforts, are either
parasites or dependents; many would seem
to have positive trades, or are connected
with branches of industry. There are
miners, masons, carpenters, paper manu-
facturers, and weavers, lacemakers even,
all working first for themselves, and next
into the earth, form natural arches and sup
ports, remove the useless soil such as the
mole, the chinchilla of Peru, the badger,
the lion ant, as well as certain worms and
molluscs. The masons build huts and
places according to all the rules of archi-
lecture, as the bees and tropical ants; ; there
are fish that construct boats that the waves
never can upset, and Aggasiz has drawn
attention TO fish which builds its nest on
the floating sea weed in the middle of the
ocean, and deposits therein its eggs. The
wasps of South America fabricate a sort Of
paper or pasteboard. Spiders are weavers
as we'll as lacemakers; one species con-
structs diving bell, palace of lace.
When the astronomer has need of the most
delicate thread for his telescope, he applies
TO tiny spider. When the naturalist de-
sires to test his microscope, he selects
certain she'll of sea insect, so small that
several millions of them in water could
not be visible to the naked eye, aud yet no
microscope has yet been made sufficiently
powerful to reveal the beautiful variegat-
ed designs on the atomic shells! Aristotle
remarked, and he has since been eorrobo-
rated, that a variety of plover enters the
crocodile's mouth, picks the remnants of
food off the animals tongue and from be-
tween his teeth. This living toothpick is
necessary, as the tongue of the crocodile is
not mobile. The Mexican owl, when en-
-joying siesta, puts itself under the guard
of kind OF rat, that gives the alarm on
the approach of danger. Parasites are ev-
erywhere, depend on no peculiar condition
OF the body, and are as abundant in per-
sons Of the most robust as of the most de-
bilitated health. They are at home in the
muscles, in the heart, in the ventricles of
the brain, in the ball Of the eye. They are
| generally in the form of leaf or ribbon,
and are not necessarily, as was once sup
posed, confined to a special animal. The
parasites of fish have been detected living
in the intestines of birds; and there are
some that, for the purpose of development,
must pass into the economy of second an
imal.-Scientyic american.