There is a spider that is a diver; he makes his own bell and fills it with air. The bee is a geometrician that never studied Euclid. The ant is a political economist, who, like Joseph, lays up supplies for a time of want. There is a “tailor bird.” There are hosts of hunters among the carnivora. The nautilus is a “little sailor,” and weavers are innumerable. Beavers unite the trades of lumbermen and civil engineers. There are carpenters and paper makers, indeed, time would fail in the attempt to mention all the occupations pursued in this busy world of animate creation. Yet over all these the Almighty has given man dominion. They are but organisms impelled to their appointed tasks by unreasoning instinct, but, as Sir William Hamilton has said: “_Man_ is not an organism, but an _intelligence_ served by organs.” [Illustration: A BIRD’S HEAD. _Ex._—The mandibles form a pair of scissors. The tongue is a spear.] NOTE.—Through the courtesy of Messrs. Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., of New York, the cuts in this article are taken from two of their excellent publications, Gray’s “Lessons and Manual of Botany,” and Hitchcock’s “Anatomy and Physiology.” SUNDAY READINGS. SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D. [_June 7._] Courtesy is, strictly speaking, a Christian grace.… It is the offspring of charity; and since it derives its being from divine grace; since it is made the subject of divine command; since it is especially calculated to smooth those little asperities which sometimes hinder even “the living stones of the temple” from being so perfectly joined and so fitly framed together as they should be; since it powerfully tends, likewise, to remove the prejudices and to allay the enmity so generally entertained by the world toward the church; above all, since, in combination with other causes it may contribute to win souls to God, we surely ought not to deem it unsuitable, but to make it … the subject of our particular and attentive consideration.… While some professed disciples of Christ seem to have substituted in the place of genuine courtesy a conformity to the manners and habits of ungodly men, which very ill consists with that simplicity of character which should distinguish the remnant of true Israelites, there are others who, through an honest disgust toward the impertinent fopperies of the world, and an ill-directed fear of becoming infected with the same spirit of guile and hypocrisies, have even run so far into the opposite extreme of churlishness as to be culpably negligent of the mere forms of civilized society.