The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1875-04-23
Animal Wonders.

In each grain Of sand, there are mar
vels in every drop of water, a woeld.
In that great spectacle called nature,
every being has its marked place and
distinct rote; and in that grand drama
called life, there presides law as har-
m0nious as that which rules the move
ment OF the stars. Each hour removes
by death myria1s of eXistences, and
each hour produces legions OF new
lives. The highest as we'll as the lowest
created organism consumes carbon and
water to support life and It's duties, aud
it is not unlnteresting 10 glance at the
food, the habits, and the ways aud
means, peculiar to some of the inferior
animals. From their petrifed elections
We know what such fossilized reptiles
as the plesiosaurus, etc. are, and may
some day be able to discover the fish
aud crustacea they hunted down. Ami
mails, when not living by their own
resp ctable 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 man
ufacturers, and weavers, lacemakers
even, all working first for themselves,
and next to propagate their kind. The
miners dig into the earth, from natural
arches and supports, remove the use
less soil such as the mole, the chir-
chilla OF Peru, the badger, the lion ant,
as well as certain worms and molluscs.
The masons build hUts and places &C,
cording to all the rules of architecture,
as the bees and tropical ants there are
fish that construct boats that the waves
never can upset, and Agassiz 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 sort of paper or pasteboard.
Spiders are Weavers as well as lace
makers one species constructs diving
bell, palace of lace. When the as
tronomer has need of the most delicate
thread for his telescope, he applies
to tiny spider. When the naturalist
desires to test his microscope, he selects
a certain shell Of sea insect, so small
that several millions of them in water
could not be visible to the naked eye,
and yet no microscope has yet been
made sufficiently powerful to reveal the
beautiful variegated designs on the
atomic smells Aristotle remarked,
and he has since been corroborated, that
a variety of plover enters the crocodile's
mouth, picks the remnants of food off
the animals tongue and from be
TWEEN it's teeth. This living tooth.
pick is necessary, as the tongue
of the crocodile is not mobile.
The Mexican owl, when enjoying
sizes a, puts itself under the guard of
kind of rat, that gives the alarm on the
approach of danger. Parasites are
every ywhere, depend on no particular
condition of the body, and are as abun-
dant in persons of the most robust as
of the most debilitated 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
either in the form of leaf or ribbon,
and are not necessarily, as was once
supposed, confined to special animal:
The parasites of fish have been detected
living in the intestines of birds; and
there are some that, for the purpose Of
must, pass into the
economy of second animal.