Thus it was that when the spring came to stir the sap in the trees and release the ice-bound brooks, at the return of the Prince, Ivanka was ready to go.
[In Nature's Workshop.]
II.—FALSE PRETENCES.
By Grant Allen.
uman life and especially human warfare are rich in deceptions, wiles, and stratagems. We dig pitfalls for wild beasts, carefully concealed by grass and branches; we take in the unsuspecting fish with artificial flies, or catch them with worms which conceal a hook treacherously barbed for their surer destruction. The savage paints his face and sticks feathers in his hair so that he may look more terrifying to his expected enemy; civilized men mask their batteries, and sometimes even paint muzzles of imaginary guns in the spaces between the gaping mouths of the real ones. Chevaux de frise block the way to points liable to attack; real troops lie in ambush and dart out unexpectedly in the rear of the assailants. Trade in like manner is full of shams—a fact which I need hardly impress by means of special examples. But Nature we are usually accustomed to consider as innocent and truthful. Alas, too trustfully: for Nature too is a gay deceiver. There is hardly a device invented by man which she has not anticipated: hardly a trick or ruse in his stock of wiles which she did not find out for herself long before he showed her.
I propose in this paper to examine a few cases of such natural deceptions—not indeed the most striking or typical, but such as occur among fairly well-known English plants and animals. And I shall begin with our familiar and unsavoury old friend, the Devil's Coach-horse.
1.—A BATTLE ROYAL: SCORPION V. SPIDER: THE SCORPION STRIKING.