We hardly know why it is that some animals that we dislike so much should have so much beauty. Worms and caterpillars are disgusting to us, and yet in many of them there is a great display of elegant colors. While writing this, I see one crawling along on my coat-sleeve with its numerous feet of curious shape. Its color is a brilliant green. On its back stand up in a row three beautiful light yellow tufts. Behind these, on a dark stripe, are two fleshy-looking round bunches, that are a most brilliant red. On its side bristle out white hairs in bundles. Its head is red, and from it extend forward dark colored but very delicate feelers, in two bundles. I suppose they are feelers, because they are shaped like the feelers of the butterfly, which you see on page 118.
Why such animals are often very beautiful.
Now why is it that so much beauty is given to such animals? It does not seem to be of any use. But this can not be so, for God has a use for every thing that he makes. We are to remember that he can make a thing beautiful as easily as he can make it homely. And it is just this lesson, perhaps, that he means to teach us when he clothes such creatures as worms and caterpillars in coverings of beautiful colors. It is different with us. We try to make beautiful only those things that we prize much. There are some things that it would be a foolish waste of time for us to ornament. This is because we can do but little in making things beautiful. But there is no end to God’s power in the creation of beauty. He can, by the word of his power, make just as many beautiful things as he pleases.
Questions.—What is said about the variety of colors in insects? What is said about butterflies? What about shells? Is their beauty of any use to the animals that live in them? Why is so much beauty put in them? What is said about the variety of colors in the coverings of birds? Tell about the hoopoe. Tell about the peacock and about the birds of Paradise. What is said about humming-birds? What is said of the furs of animals? What is said about worms and caterpillars? Why is so much beauty often given to such animals?
CHAPTER XXIX.
HOW MAN IS SUPERIOR TO ANIMALS.
Man’s superiority in his mind.
You see, from what I have told you, that man can do with his hands a great variety of things that animals can not do. It has been said, therefore, by some that the hand is the great thing that makes man superior to animals. But this is not true. Of what use would the hand be if there was not a mind in the head that knew how to use it? Suppose that your cat had a hand instead of a paw, could she write with it? No; the mind in her brain does not know enough for this. And so there are a great many other things that we do with our hands which the cat would not know enough to do with hands, if she had them.
So, then, it is not the hand merely that makes you superior to a cat, but it is the mind that uses the hand. Your mind knows more than her mind does, and wants to do more things than her mind ever dreams of. Your mind, therefore, needs such an instrument as the hand to do these things with, while a paw answers very well for the cat.
Machinery of animals suited to their minds.