“Where the globe of the Earth glowed dimly”
“Yes,” he repeated, his manner becoming of a sudden deeply serious, “our world that thinks itself so far advanced has not the wisdom, the foresight, Stubbins, which we have seen here. Fighting, fighting, fighting, always fighting!—So it goes on down there with us. . . . The ‘survival of the fittest’! . . . I’ve spent my whole life trying to help the animal, the so-called lower, forms of life. I don’t mean I am complaining. Far from it. I’ve had a very good time getting in touch with the beasts and winning their friendship. If I had my life over again I’d do just the same thing. But often, so often, I have felt that in the end it was bound to be a losing game. It is this thing here, this Council of Life—of life adjustment—that could have saved the day and brought happiness to all.”
“Yes, Doctor,” said I, “but listen: compared with our world, they have no animal life here at all, so far as we’ve seen. Only insects and birds. They’ve no lions or tigers who have to hunt for deer and wild goats to get a living, have they?”
“True, Stubbins—probably true,” said he. “But don’t forget that that same warfare of species against species goes on in the Insect Kingdom as well as among the larger carnivora. In another million years from now some scientist may show that the war going on between Man and the House Fly to-day is the most important thing in current history.—And besides, who shall say what kind of a creature the tiger was before he took to a diet of meat?”
John Dolittle then turned back to the vines and asked some further questions. These were mostly about the Council; how it worked; of what it was composed; how often it met, etc. And the answers that they gave filled out a picture which we had already half guessed and half seen of Life on the Moon.
When I come to describe it I find myself wishing that I were a great poet, or at all events a great writer. For this moon-world was indeed a land of wondrous rest. Trees that sang; flowers that could see; butterflies and bees that conversed with one another and with the plants on which they fed, watched over by a parent council that guarded the interests of great and small, strong and weak, alike—the whole community presented a world of peace, goodwill and happiness which no words of mine could convey a fair idea of.
“One thing I don’t quite understand,” said the Doctor to the vines, “is how you manage about seeding. Don’t some of the plants throw down too much seed and bring forth a larger crop than is desirable?”
“That,” said the Whispering Vines, “is taken care of by the birds. They have orders to eat up all the seed except a certain quantity for each species of plant.”
“Humph!” said the Doctor. “I hope I have not upset things for the Council. I did a little experimental planting myself when I first arrived here. I had brought several kinds of seed with me from the Earth and I wanted to see how they would do in this climate. So far, however, the seeds have not come up at all.”
The vines swayed slightly with a rustling sound that might easily have been a titter of amusement.