ns_. Now we have anatomy cited to belittle the difference between a
hand and a foot, and geology importuned to show us the missing link,
pending which an order has been instituted roomy enough to hold monkeys,
gorillas, and men. It is a strange perversity. How much more fitting it
were to bow in reverent ignorance before the perfect hand, taken up from
the ground, no more to dull its percipient surfaces on earth and stones
and bark, but to minister to its lord's expanding mind and obey his
creative will, while his frame stands upright and firm upon a single
pair of true feet, with their toes all in one rank.

II

BILLS OF BIRDS

The prospectus, or advertisement, of a certain American typewriting
machine commences by informing the public that "The ---- typewriter is
founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my
collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a
true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the _phainomena_, of Nature are
innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and
you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising
their evolutions; but until you have looked through them and seen the
ideas that are behind them you are a mere materialist and a blind
worker. The soul of Nature is hid from you.

What is the bill of a bird and what does it mean? I do not refer to the
bill of a hawk, or a heron, or an owl, or an ostrich, but to that which
is the abstract of all these and a thousand more. I hold, regardless of
anatomy and physiology, that a bird is a higher being than a beast. No
beast soars and sings to its sweetheart; no beast remains in lifelong
partnership with the wife of its youth; no beast builds itself a
summer-house and decks it with feathers and bright shells. A beast is a
grovelling denizen of the earth; a bird is a free citizen of the air.
And who can say that there is not a connection between this difference
and other developments? The beast, thinking only of its appetites, has
evolved a delicate nose, a discriminating palate, three kinds of teeth
to cut, tear, and grind its food, salivary glands to moisten the same,
and a perfected apparatus of digestion.

[Illustration: GOOD FOR ANY ROUGH JOB]

The bird, occupied with thoughts of love and beauty, with "fields, or
waves, or mountains" and "shapes of sky or plain," has made little
advance in the art and instruments of good living. It swallows its food
whole,