Man, in his conquest and use of animal life, will run the gamut, from the biggest elephant, employed as a public executioner in India, to the invisible microbe, doing a work ten thousand times more important all over the globe. These infinitesimal microbes, bred and controlled by science, will do regularly and methodically the work which buzzards and vultures have done on land, which sharks and dogfish have done at sea, throughout endless centuries. To the marvellous workings of nature we cannot possibly give too much thought or too great admiration. Gardens are filled with beautiful flowers, and fields are fertile to-day because hundreds of years ago sea birds were devouring the carcasses of dead fish, acting as nature's scavengers, and building up the great guano fields of South America. There is a Peruvian millionaire in his big yacht, and there is a rose in full bloom--the millionaire's money, the beauty of the rose, come from those birds that picked up the dead fish five hundred years ago. It's an interesting world. THE ELEPHANT THAT WILL NOT MOVE HAS BETTER EXCUSES THAN WE HAVE FOR FOLLY DISPLAYED This is an editorial which we shall merely suggest, and which each reader will write out for himself. In the Zoological Garden of New York a poor elephant has stood in chains for years. The animal was thought to be vicious, and was kept fastened tightly to one spot, that it might have no leeway to do damage. A short time ago its keeper became convinced that the elephant would do no harm and might safely be unchained. The chains were taken off, and the keeper thought with satisfaction that the poor beast would now enjoy freedom and be made happy by the possibility of moving freely about its large inclosure. The elephant did not move. The chains were gone, it was no longer tied, but it stood, and it still stands, in just the same spot. The habit of slavery, of monotony, had become too strong. The elephant, though free, stands still, sadly swaying its heavy head, ignorant of the freedom that has come to it. Men and women and children who see the elephant, and other men who write paragraphs for the newspapers, dilate on the poor animal's "stupidity." "The elephant has been called the most intelligent of animals," says one writer, "but this elephant, that doesn't know when the chains are off, seems to prove that the elephant can be a good deal of a fool." How easy it is for us human beings to see the faults in others, our fellows, and the animals below us. But which one of us can truly say that he is not in exactly the same position as that poor elephant, fixed to one spot by the chains of long ago? Are we not still standing as a race just as we stood years and centuries ago, ignorant of the freedom that has come to us? Thousands of splendid men have worked, lived and died to free us from superstition, from credulity, from ignorance, yet still we stand in the same place, and fail to appreciate the freedom that is ours. ----