The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

At one time naturalists never even thought that there was anything to unravel, for they looked upon the animal kingdom as upon a building put together brick by brick, each in its place from the beginning. To them, therefore, the fact that a fish’s fin, a bird’s wing, a horse’s leg, a man’s arm and hand, and the flipper of a whale, were all somewhat akin, had no other meaning than that they seemed to have been formed upon the same plan; and when it became certain that different kinds of animals had appeared from time to time upon the earth, the naturalists of fifty years ago could have no grander conception than that new creatures were separately made (they scarcely asked themselves how) and put into the world as they were wanted.

But a higher and better explanation was soon to be found, for there was growing up among us the greatest naturalist and thinker of our day, that patient lover and searcher after truth, Charles Darwin, whose genius and earnest labours opened our eyes gradually to a conception so deep, so true, and so grand, that side by side with it the idea of making an animal from time to time, as a sculptor makes a model of clay, seems too weak and paltry ever to have been attributed to an Almighty Power.

By means of the facts collected by our great countryman and the careful conclusions which he drew from them, we have learned to see that there has been a gradual unfolding of life upon the globe, just as a plant unfolds first the seed-leaves, then the stem, then the leaves, then the bud, the flower, and the fruit; so that though each part has its own beauties and its own appointed work, we cannot say that any stands alone, or could exist without the whole. Surely then Natural History acquires quite a new charm for us when we see that our task is to study among living forms, and among the remains of those that are gone, what has been the education and the development of all the different branches, so as to lead to the greatest amount of widespreading life upon the globe, each having its own duty to perform. With the great thought before us that every bone, every hair, every small peculiarity, every tint of colour, has its meaning, and has, or has had, its use in the life of each animal or those that have gone before it, a lifelong study even can never weary us in thus tracing out the working of Nature’s laws, which are but the expression to us of the mind of the great Creator.

When we once realise that whether in attacking or avoiding an enemy it is in most cases a great advantage to all animals to be hidden from view, and that each creature has arrived at this advantage by slow inheritance, so that their colours often exactly answer the purpose, how wonderful becomes the gray tint of the slug, the imitation of bark in the wings of the buff-tip moth, the green and brown hues of the eatable caterpillars, the white coat of the polar bear, and the changing colour of the arctic fox, the ermine, and the ptarmigan, as winter comes on! And when, on the other hand, we find badly-tasting creatures such as ladybirds and some butterflies, or stinging animals like bees and wasps, having bright colours, because it is an actual advantage to them to be known and avoided, we see that in studying colour alone we might spend a lifetime learning how the winners in life’s race are those best fitted for the circumstances under which they live, so that in ever-changing variety the most beautifully-adapted forms flourish and multiply.

Then if we turn to the skeleton and the less conspicuous framework of the body, the flippers of the whale, the manatee, or the seal, doing the work of a fish’s fin and yet having the bones of a hand and arm, reveal a whole history to us when we have once learned the secret that in the attempt to increase and multiply no device is left untried by any group of animals, and so every possible advantage is turned to account.

Next, the wonderful instincts taught by long experience give us a whole field of study. We see how frogs and reptiles, and even higher animals such as marmots, squirrels, shrews and bears, escape the cold and scarcity of food in winter by burying themselves in mud, or in holes of trees or caves of the earth till spring returns; and while we find alligators burying themselves in cold weather in America, we find crocodiles, on the contrary, taking their sleep in the hot dry weather in Egypt because then is their time of scarcity.

Then we learn that the birds avoid this difficulty of change of climate in quite another manner. They with their power of flight have learned to migrate, sometimes for short distances, sometimes for more than a thousand miles, so that they bring up their young ones in the cool north in summer, when caterpillars and soft young insects are at hand for their prey, and lead them in the winter to the sunny south where food and shelter in green trees are always to be found. So long indeed has this instinct of migration been at work, that often we are quite baffled in trying to understand why they take this or that particular route for their flight, because probably, when the first stragglers chose it, even the areas of land and water were not divided as now, so that we must study the whole history of the changing geography of the earth to understand the yearly route of the swallow or the stork.

And last but not least, when we look upon the whole animal creation as the result of the long working out of nature’s laws as laid down from the first by the Great Power of the Universe, what new pleasure we find in every sign of intelligence, affection, and devotion in the lower creatures! For these show that the difficulties and dangers of animal life have not only led to wonderfully-formed bodies, but also to higher and more sensitive natures; and that intelligence and love are often as useful weapons in fighting the battle of life as brute force and ferocity.

Even among the fish, which, as a rule, drop their eggs and leave them to their fate, we have exceptions in the nest-building sticklebacks and the snake-headed fish of Asia, which watch over and defend their fry till they are strong, in the pipe-fish where the fathers carry the young in a pouch, and in sharks which travel in pairs; while a pike has been known to watch for days at the spot where his mate was caught and taken away, and mackerel and herrings live in shoals and probably call to each other across the sea.

Among the other cold-blooded animals—the frogs, newts, and reptiles—it is true we find less show of feeling, but we must remember that these are only poor remaining fragments of large groups which have disappeared from the earth. Even among the amphibia however a tame toad will become attached to one person; while among reptiles, lizards are full of intelligence and affection, and snakes are well-known for their fondness for their owners. The case of the snake which died by its master’s side when he fell down insensible,[202] if it can be relied upon, would show that even cold-blooded animals have tender hearts.