with or
eclipse her flame. Except--I wonder if ever a firefly has hastened
downward toward the strange glow which we sometimes see in the heart of
decayed wood,--mistaking a patch of fox-fire for the love-light of which
he was in search!

In other species, including the common one about our homes, the lady
lightning-bug is more fortunate in possessing wings and is able to fly
abroad like her mate.

Although this phosphorescence has been microscopically examined, it is but
slightly understood. We know, however, that it is a wonderful process of
combustion,--by which a bright light is produced without heat, smoke, or
indeed fuel, except that provided by the life processes in the tiny body
of the insect.

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Shakespeare.

A STARFISH AND A DAISY

Day after day the forms of horses, dogs, birds, and other creatures pass
before our eyes. We look at them and call them by the names which we have
given them, and yet--we see them not. That is to say, we say that they
have a head, a tail; they run or fly; they are of one colour beneath,
another above, but beyond these bare meaningless facts most of us never
go.

Let us think of the meaning of form. Take, for example, a flower--a daisy.
Now, if we could imagine such an impossible thing as that a daisy blossom
should leave its place of growth, creep down the stem and go wandering off
through the grass, soon something would probably happen to its shape. It
would perhaps get in the habit of creeping with some one ray always in
front, and the friction of the grass stems on either side would soon wear
and fray the ends of the side rays, while those behind might grow longer
and longer. If we further suppose that this strange daisy flower did not
like the water, the rays in front might be of service in warning it to
turn aside. When their tips touched the surface and were wet by the water
of some pool, the ambulatory blossom would draw back and start out in a
new direction. Thus a theoretical head (with the beginnings of the organs
of sense), and a long-drawn-out tail, would have their origin.

Such a remarkable simile is not as fanciful as it might at first appear;
for although we know of no blossom which so sets at naught the sedentary
life of the vegetable kingdom, yet among certain of the animals which live
their lives beneath the waves of the sea a very similar thing occu