Morning journal and courier., 1881-08-16
Men and Animals.

Within certain limits the lower animals are much more skillful in supplying their wants than men. Insects, birds, fishes, reptiles
 mammals-one really does not know which department of the natural world exhibits the most skill in supplying it's wants Let me instance the case of trap-door spiders. re- fer to their doings, because they are less fa- miIiar than those of ants and bees and other creatures which might mention. The trap door spider lives in a burrow which he makes in the ground where the grass grows,
 generally in sloping bank; he covers the
 entrance to his burrow with 8 trap door,
 which works upon a hinge, and which so
 nearly resembles the surrounding grass that
 only a careful observer can detect it. This,
 however, is not all if an enemy finds the
 door and opens it, and enters the spiders
 castle, he may very easily fancy that IS
 no one at home, for in the sides of the burrow,
 which is lined with soft silky substance,
 there are other trap-doors communicating
 with branches of the burrow, and covering these branches so craftily that they may
 easily be passed by unnoticed. Nay, if the
 enemy should be clever enough to find his
 way into one of these branches, he may still
 find no one at home, the owner of the castle
 being perhaps in branch of this branch of
 the burrow, concealed by another trap-doo
 Architecture of this kind shuts the mouth Of
 any one who should say that the inferior
 members of creation do no know how to
 adapt means to ends Nor can it be said that
 the power of adaptation does not go to some
 extent beyond the wonders of instinct. The
 old story Of the bees who destroyed an in truding mouse with their stings, and then
 covered it over with wax because they could not get rid of the body and feared the results
 of it's continuance in the hive, is only one of a number which go to prove that in the low CT world of living things there is unquestion- ably power of adaptation to unforeseen cir cumstances, a reasoning out of results and
 acting accordingly, which cannot possibly be
 set down to the credit of instinct, properly so
 called. But the important point to be ob-
 served is this the infinite superiority of the
 animals operations when it does not reason
 and the infinite inferiority of it's operations
 to those of man when it does. It has been
 said that bird will carry an oyster into the
 air and let 1t drop upon a rock in order to
 break the shell and get at the treasure with
 in simple operation this. and yet we stand we'll nigh aghast at the birds prodigious su- periority above all that we had expected, and we doubt whether such wonderful feat can be positively substantiated. will not say that there may not be in insects and birds and mammals the germ of that faculty which in- vented the steam engine but certainly it seems almost impossible to contain in one de- scription or definition two faculties so di- verse in the importance of their results. Adaptation of means to ends is not in the case of man something subsidiary to instinct, and exhibiting itself now and then in excep- tional circumstances, but it is the very law of his being. The merest savage contrives machines to catch his prey; he makes his stone implements till he sees his way to bronze and iron; he constructs his boat or floats on his log of timber he may be and doubtless is rude and elementary, but he IS the genuine ancestor of James Watt and George Stephenson.-Ihe BiStop cf CGrEisls.