his huge one-hinge joint, in the graminivora
and herbivora, the joint of free motion for
grinding. Millstones were set up in our
molars and in the gizzards of birds before the
Egyptian women ground their corn between
two stones, and the crushing teeth of the
hyena, make the best models we know of
for hammers to break stones on the road.
The tongue of certain shell-fish—of the
limpet, for instance—is full of siliceous spines
which serve as rasp and drill; and knives and
scissors were carried about in the mandibles
and beaks of primeval bees and parrots.

The leech and parasite fishes bled men
before Sangrado's time, and the gnat and
many other insects furnished lancets to
cupping-glasses. Gas-pipes and drains were
pre-formed in blood-vessels and leaf-veins:
the first valves were made in the blood-
receiving heart; and trap-doors, shutting
only one way, were set across sundry internal
passages of the mammalian world. The
floodgates of locks and docks might have been
long ago studied in the two cartilaginous
plates set at the back of the crocodile's
mouth, by which he can shut off all communication
between his mouth and throat; thus,
while holding his prey under water, still
being able to breathe: and the first idea of the
iron-girders of the Crystal Palace came (we
believe confessedly) from a study of the
girders stretching across and supporting the
under side of the huge leaf of the Victoria
regia. Our sharpshooters and scouts and
riflemen dress themselves to be as
undistinguishable as possible when out in action,
or while lying in wait: long ago the young
turbot did the same, when he took the hue of
the sand whereon he rests; and, following the
same law, the chameleon-fish becomes a
brownish purple in deep water and yellowish
green in shallow. The spectre insects and
walking leaves of the East are the very copies
of the things among which they dwell—like
dead leaves or dried-up twigs, like green
leaves or perambulating buds—every one of
them; and the tropical spiders, that live in
crevices and holes, are dingy and dirty, while
those hiding among the flowers are as bright
as the flowers themselves.* The sportsman
dresses himself in a certain brown or grey,
known to the tailoring world, ignorant of the
why and stumbling by chance on first
principles, as fitted for his purposes: but the red
grouse and the red deer were heath-coloured
before tailors fashioned their celebrated
sporting suits, and the lapwing and the
curlew laid their eggs like in colour to the
pasture that was to hide them. Before, too,
the axiom of like from like had obtained in
our breeding-studs, Nature had set us a very
beautiful example of the law in her pine
forests, if in nothing else. The Norway
spruce bears cones like itself, thin, tall, and
elegant; the stone-pine—great, broad-based
and pyramidal—has cones broad and
apexial: Coulter's pine is round and heavy
and bulky—so are its cones; while the
cluster-pine is perfect in proportion and perfect
in expression of strength—the monarch
and the leafy Jove of the forest pinery.
* See also Spiders in Disguise, Household Words,
Volume 3, page 46.

The insect world is overwhelming in
types of forms and fashions and arts and
sciences, in present use. Carpenter and
mason, wood-stainer and shell-box maker, are
to be seen any day among the bees and the
wasps, the ants and the caddis-worms. Cells
were hung with scarlet-leaf upholstery before
we put up our curtains, or knew the value of
brilliant colours in gloomy places; and nests
and breeding-cells were lined with the softest
moss and most silky fibres, while human
infants wailed in undressed cowhides, or,
hitched up as papooses, stared blankly on
their savage mothers roasting roots in heated
ashes.

In nothing have we originated ideas, in
nothing have we created. Even Baptista
Porta's mythical monsters, so long received
among national and nursery creeds, are now
known to have been uncreate even in
imagination, and to have been simply varieties of
species, or hybrids, exaggerated by ignorance
or superstition. Man has thus been indebted
to Nature for the very models of his
invented lies. His three great types of political
society, the monarchical, oligarchical, and
democratic, may be found among insect and
other communities, not enrolled in historic
records; and every moral characteristic he
possesses finds its prototype among creatures
of lower intelligence. The forethought of the
ant, the activity of the bee, the faithfulness
of the dog, the stupid ferocity of the buffalo,
the cruel foulness of the hyena, and the
savage rage of the tiger, are they not all
emblems of man's moral state? Are there
not also among us individuals who hiss
at nothing, like frightened geese; who
cackle, for all the world to hear, over their
diminutive eggs; who thrust their heads into
holes, and fancy no one sees their tail-feathers
sticking out; who bray as loud as lions
roar, because the wind is in the east, or the
rain is coming from the south; who strut to
their own shadows, like peacocks in the sun,
and prowl about their neighbours' henroosts
like foxes in the night? Do we not all know
of patient camels, bearing their weary loads
with sad pathetic faces void of complaint;
and of proud shy horses, with soft mouths
and irritable nerves, who have to be coaxed
into prancing in their harness? Is there a
schoolboy or an office-man among us who
cannot name the dogged bullock, plodding
under the yoke, the race-horse, who breaks
his heart in emulation, the brave dog
harnessed to too heavy a truck, the
monkey, who only imitates for mischief,
and can never be brought to usefulness
or good? Have we not patriarchal
goats among us, and placid milch-cows?