Put your hand upon your heart for a moment. You can feel something there, going "beat, beat," and you know that as long as that "beat, beat" goes on you are alive. If it were to stop you would die, for no man has power to set it going again. Now, you can also feel the beating of the heart of a dog, or of a little frightened bird as you hold it in your hand; and you know that when its heart ceases to move, its little hour of pleasure or pain is over, for there is nothing in the dead body of a bird, as there is even in a dry seed, that will make it spring up and grow again—all its life has gone.
Even as I am writing this for you, a sparrow, picking up crumbs of bread, comes hopping close to my feet. The crumbs feed his little life, and you know that he would soon die, starved to death like many a poor birdie in its cage, if he could get no food. You, too, would die if you had nothing to eat; that is, your body would, but not what has most right to be called you; that never-dying spirit which has lived in your body as its house—it would still be alive—alive to God: "for all live unto Him." So different are you from the beasts that perish that we will turn to the Book from which alone we can know the truth, and there let us notice, first, that when man was to be made, it is no longer, "And God said, Let there be: and there was;" but instead, the wondrous words are written, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…. So God created man in His own image"; and again we read, "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
We are now going to study some of the wonderful works of God in the animal-world, and I hope to be able to tell you some interesting stories of what creatures who have not language, and cannot reason in the way in which we can, have been able to do by instinct and intelligence.
It is very pleasant to read the accounts given by other people of what they have observed, but even better still to learn to use our own eyes. Try this plan, and you will be surprised at the many curious and beautiful things about the ways of animals which you can find out for yourself.
You remember, when we were talking about fishes and birds, we found that they both belong to the great group of animals called Vertebrate, from having a backbone made of many pieces beautifully fitted together.
We are now going to speak of the last class in that great group—the Mammalia, so called because they feed their young, not as birds do, with insects or grain, but with milk. They are chiefly "four-footed beasts of the earth," and are covered with hair or fur. In this class extremes meet; we find the great elephant and the playful little squirrel, the kingly lion and the timid mouse which is said to have set him free when snared in the hunter's net.
To this class also belong the land-monsters of bygone days, whose skeletons you may see in museums: such as the Mammoth, or hairy elephant, found in the British Isles, and also over half the globe; the Mastodon, another elephantine extinct monster, whose remains are found in America; the Woolly Rhinoceros, with two large horns on his face, dug out of the frozen soil of Siberia; the Great Irish Deer, whose antlers measured 9 feet from tip to tip; and Giant Sloths of South America, inhabitating the same region as the Sloths of to-day.
But we must leave the "unnumbered, unremembered tribes" of buried creatures which once trod this earth; and speaking only of those now alive, I must tell you that in the first Division of the great class, Mammalia, naturalists place the Quadrumana, or four-handed creatures. This name is given to all monkeys; because their great-toes are like thumbs, so that they can take hold of the branches in the forests where they spend their lives, quite as well with their feet as with their hands.
I need not tell you what they are like, for you know something of the noisy, chattering, mischievous creatures, from watching them at the "Zoo." But you have never seen the enormous apes which live in Africa and the forests of Borneo. Of these the Orang-outang—its name means "man of the woods"—is the largest. He is as tall as a man, and very strong, with long arms, which almost reach the ground as he stands. From the pictures I have seen, I certainly should not like to meet this "man of the woods" at home, seated in the sort of nest which he makes for himself in the trees. But these great, fierce-looking creatures can be tamed; and I have read of one who might be seen walking in the garden, arm-in-arm with his keeper; and of another who would sit at table and imitate everything which he saw people do. He would pour out his tea, put sugar and milk in it, and then hold his cup and saucer, and drink the tea, all very cleverly; for no animals are so good at imitating others as monkeys are. Remember this, if you are fond of copying what other people do and say, be sure that you copy only what is worthy of imitation.
[Illustration: TOO CLEVER.]