op. The insect pierces with its sharp mouth-parts the
skin of the plant and sucks in sweet sap which by and by overflows over
its body. It works its body up and down many times, whipping in air,
which mixes with the sugary sap, reminding one of how "whipped egg" is
made. But along with the sugary sap and the air, there is a little
ferment from the food-canal and a little wax from glands on the skin,
and the four things mixed together make a kind of soap which lasts
through the heat of the day.
There are many other modes of disguise besides those which we have been
able to illustrate. Indeed, the biggest fact is that there are so many,
for it brings us back to the idea that life is not an easy business. It
is true, as Walt Whitman says, that animals do not sweat and whine about
their condition; perhaps it is true, as he says, that not one is
unhappy over the whole earth. But there is another truth, that this
world is not a place for the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, and that
when a creature has not armour or weapons or cleverness it must find
some path of safety or go back. One of these paths of safety is
disguise, and we have illustrated its evolution.
V
THE ASCENT OF MAN
THE ASCENT OF MAN
Sec. 1
No one thinks less of Sir Isaac Newton because he was born as a very
puny infant, and no one should think less of the human race because it
sprang from a stock of arboreal mammals. There is no doubt as to man's
apartness from the rest of creation when he is seen at his best--"a
little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honour." "What a
piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! in
form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension so like a God." Nevertheless, all the facts point to his
affiliation to the stock to which monkeys and apes also belong. Not,
indeed, that man is descended from any living ape or monkey; it is
rather that he and they have sprung from a common ancestry--are branches
of the same stem. This conclusion is so momentous that the reasons for
accepting it must be carefully considered. They were expounded with
masterly skill in Darwin's _Descent of Man_ in 1871--a book which was
but an expansion of a chapter in _The Origin of Species_ (1859).
Anatomical Proof of Man's Relationship with a Simian Stock
The anatomical structure of man is closely similar to that of the
anthropoid apes--the gorilla, the or
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