I think, however, we have arrived at a point of knowledge where we may answer an oft repeated question: “Why the Almighty has created so many insects, covering the earth, swarming in the air, or teeming in the waters?” They doubtless have many purposes, that in our dim knowledge we do not see, but they serve at least one important end; they are carbon makers, and without carbon no plant can grow, and without the plant what would become of the animal? So, to a certain extent our lives depend on the things which ofttimes only seem to annoy us. We are so ground in the mills of God, so built, linked and woven, so dependent and so cared for by the power that is in us, that the microscope can see nothing too small, that does not concern us in its use and sphere of action; and the telescope can behold no world so grand but it, too, may be considered only an aggregated expression of what we find in the miniature object.
No organism that lives and dies in the sea is lost or wasted, and like the drops of water that are scattered and spread abroad over the universe, and are gathered again to the sea, so do all these forms of life that inhabit the deep serve an important purpose while living, and when the life has departed from their forms they leave their good works behind them in the shape of iron, lime, silica, and carbon, for the use and the convenience of other lives that succeed them.
MY YEARS.
By ADA IDDINGS GALE.
O happy years! that pass and will not stay,
I con you o’er—as one might that doth clasp
A string of limpid pearls in her fond grasp—