Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/257
INDEPENDENCE.
The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals, bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-office, and the human race run on his errands; to the book-shop, and the human race read and write of all that happens for him; to the court-house, and nations repair his wrongs. He sets his house upon the road, and the human race go forth every morning, and shovel out the snow, and cut a path for him.
R. W. Emerson.
Some men delight to vaunt of their independence, and some women, too, are not one whit behind the other sex in the assertion of personal independency. How often do we make use of words and phrases in ordinary conversation which reflection would cause us either to repudiate or condemn. "Independence" is one of these, for in reality there is no such a thing as absolute independence in creation. It is true that one man may flourish in circumstances and conditions in which he is less dependent upon the will and caprice of others; but, after all, his independence is only relative. There is a very comfortable association of this word in the announcement that such an one is "possessed of independent means." Never having realized such a consummation in our own proper persons, we shall not call its realities in question, nor deem such independence a myth; relative though it may be, its relations are good. It is easy enough in the common affairs of life to observe how a man is dependent upon the vicissitudes of trade, and the deeds of other men; how his own equanimity depends upon the digestion of his dinner; how much the quality of his beef has depended upon his butcher; how his butcher has depended upon the markets; how the markets have depended upon a hundred other circumstances linked together in a chain; and how this chain is woven into such a network of dependence that small and remote events exert their influences in all directions. The first dead cow of the Rinderpest is now denouncing independence with golden arguments drawn from the pockets of thousands of beef-eaters.
In the lower walks of life, amongst the humblest of creatures, there are uneasing examples of dependence. Early in the spring unusually large numbers of queen wasps prognosticated a prolific year, and yet the numbers have been so few that it is likely to become an event worthy of remembrance. Had the queens been independent, as queens are supposed to be, we should have swarmed with wasps. And the multiplicity of flies, again, with which we have been favoured, is, in part at least, the consequence of a minority of wasps.
Cabbages and brocoli are vegetables which have many foes. Some bipeds delight to devour them at dinner, but a host of caterpillars struggle for their share. If the stock of caterpillars should preponderate, then the dinner-table must be left bare. But the caterpillars are not independent. An army of winged enemies puncture their bodies, which become the ultimate home of a brood of Ichneumons, destined to puncture and keep in check a future race of caterpillars and protect the vegetables for the table of man. In this instance the proud and independent burgomaster owes his boiled cabbage to the assiduity of a little fly. Réaumur found that of thirty caterpillars of the Cabbage Butterfly, twenty-five were destroyed by a species of Microgaster. Very recently the Archbishop of Bordeaux has alluded publicly to the great dearth of cabbages in that district, causing the vegetable to disappear even from the tables of the rich, the ultimate occasion of which he attributes to the wholesale destruction of small birds.
In articles of clothing, as well as food, until we return to the pristine simplicity of our first progenitors, we must rest content to be dependent in almost every direction. As it is, our hatter will inform us that one insect furnishes the external material, and another the scarcely less important dressing for the body; and that for a hat we are dependent not only upon the larvæ of the silk moth, and the proper development of mulberry leaves, but also upon the minute lac-insect which punctures the branches of the fig and the jujube in the forests of India.
Shall we vaunt of independence when a preponderance of hop mildew may rob us of our "bitter beer;" when a prolific mould may spoil all our potatoes; when murrain or deficient root crops may make beef scarce; or an American quarrel double the price of cotton.
Neither can the fair sex give a much more favourable account of their independence when the ghosts of all the birds from whom they have plucked feathers to adorn themselves arise to condemn them. The little quadrupeds of the weasel tribe that have
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