ormed of a multitude of tiny feathers,
each one perfectly equipped, perfectly made, mechanically and
geometrically without fault. Each of these tiny side feathers has its
own midrib that tapers from base to tip, and each of these midribs
carries its own equipment of side 'hairs' so beautifully constructed
that it locks automatically into the one on each side of it in such a
way that it makes a solid yet flexible mass of the whole surface,
against which the air flows as the bird flies.

"If these side feathers be split apart they will come back into place
so exactly that the split cannot be detected. Nothing else in nature
repairs itself with such precision. Many things, for instance the claw
leg of the crawfish, will replace itself exactly when destroyed, but
the feather alone _repairs_ its own breaks precisely and automatically.

"Taken as a whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of
nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the
engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical
plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry
are flawless, and there is not one single point about it that can be
constructively criticized.

"This short article can only hint at the wonderful things one may find
in a single feather, and it is something well worth not an hour, but
weeks or months of the most painstaking and careful study, for it covers
an amazing field."

The electric battery in certain fishes is so palpable a case of design
that Charles Darwin admitted his inability to account for it by Natural
Selection. The electric ray, or torpedo, for instance, has been provided
with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and
compactness of its structure, it greatly exceeds the batteries by which
man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his
will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like
those of a bee's comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of
horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the
batteries used in automobiles. The whole is supplied with an enormous
amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as
the animal's spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of
thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into
all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have
been gradually