There is a slow, bloodless struggle of one species with another—the fleet with the slow, the cunning with the stupid, the sharp-eyed and sharp-eared with the dull of eye and ear, the keen of scent with the blunt of scent—which we call natural competition; but the slow, the stupid, the dull-eyed, dull-eared, and dull-scented find their place and thrive for all that. They are dull and slow because they do not need to be otherwise; the conditions of their lives do not require speed and sharpness. The porcupine has its barbed quills, the skunk its pungent secretion. All parts of nature dovetail together. The deer and the antelope kind have speed and sharp senses because their enemies have speed and sharp senses. The small birds are keen-eyed and watchful because the hawks are so, too. The red squirrel dominates the gray squirrel, which is above him in size and strength, and the chipmunk below him, but he does not exterminate either. The chipmunk burrows in the ground where the red cannot follow him, and he lays up a store of nuts and seeds which the red does not. The weasel easily dominates the rat, but the rat prospers in spite of cats and traps and weasels.
The sifting of species is done largely by environment, the wet, the cold, the heat—the fittest, or those best adapted to their environment, survive. For some obscure reason they have a fuller measure of life than those who fall by the way.
III. HEADS AND TAILS
I have heard a story of a young artist who, after painting a picture of a horse facing a storm, was not satisfied with it, and, feeling that something was wrong, asked Landseer to look at it. Instantly the great artist said to him, "Turn the horse around."
The cow turns her head to the storm, the horse turns his tail. Why this difference? Because each adopts the plan best suited to its needs and its anatomy. How much better suited is the broad, square head of the cow, with its heavy coating of hair and its ridge of bone that supports its horns, to face the storm than is the smooth, more nervous and sensitive head of the horse! What a contrast between their noses and their mode of grazing! The cow has no upper front teeth; she reaps the grass with the scythe of her tongue, while the horse bites it off and loves to bite the turf with it. The lip of the horse is mobile and sensitive. Then the bovine animals fight with their heads, and the equine with their heels. The horse is a hard and high kicker, the cow a feeble one in comparison. The horse will kick with both hind feet, the cow with only one. In fact, there is not much "kick" in her kind. The tail of the cow is of less protection to her than is that of the horse to him. Her great need of it is to fight flies, and, if attacked in the rear, it furnishes a good hold for her enemies. Then her bony stern, with its ridges and depressions and thin flanks, is less fit in any encounter with storm or with beast than is her head. On the other hand, the round, smooth, solid buttocks of the horse, with their huge masses of muscles, his smooth flanks, and his tail—an apron of long, straight, strong hair—are well designed to resist storm and cold. What animal is it in Job whose neck is clothed with thunder? With the horse, it is the hips that are so clothed. His tremendous drive is in his hips.
IV. AN UNSAVORY SUBJECT
If a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, I suppose the breath of the obscene fungus by any other name would smell as rank. The defensive weapon of our black-and-white wood pussy would probably not be less offensive if we called him by that name alone, instead of the common one by which he is universally known.
While in southern California last winter I heard of one that took up his abode in the basement of a house that stood on the side of a hill in the edge of the country. It was in a sort of lumber-room where all sorts of odds and ends had accumulated. On some shelves was a box of miscellaneous articles, such as lids to tin cans, bed castors, old toothbrushes, bits of broken crockery, pieces of wire, chips of wood, and the dried foot and leg of a hen. One morning, on opening the door of the basement, the mistress of the house was surprised to see the whole collection of trash laid out in a line across the floor. The articles were placed with some degree of regularity covering a space about fifteen inches wide and ten feet in length. There were sixty-one articles in the row.
Having such an unsavory creature in the basement of one's house is rather ticklish business; not so perilous as a stick of dynamite, yet fraught with unpleasant possibilities. They cleared away the exhibit and left the door open, hoping their uninvited guest would take his departure. But he did not. A few nights later he began another collection, finding a lot of new material—among other things a box with old atomizer bulbs, four of which bulbs he arranged here and there, in the row—a motley array.
What is his object? I confess I do not know. No one has seen him do it, as he works at night, but there is little doubt that it is his work.[3] The Western skunk is a small creature, not much bigger than a gray squirrel. He can hide behind a dustpan.