But do you know who was at the bottom of it all? Mother! All the things that men have done in the development of national life, with its arts and industries, everything we call civilization, grew out of the life and industry of the home, and it was mother who finally made the home. The mother idea came into the world with the first seed that ever started out to make its own way; for the mother plant had provided it with food enough to keep it going until it could get well-established in business. But the kind of mothers we know, mothers who stay with their babies and feed them, came very late in the long story of life. In the early days the world was not only without flowers and birds and the beautiful trees and varied landscapes we know, but it was motherless, in the sense that we understand mothers. In the lowest forms of life, such as the insects, the mothers and children never saw each other at all; for among the insects just as it is to-day the mother simply laid the eggs and then, before the little insects were born, passed away. Even among the fish, who are much closer relations of ours than the insects--since fish belong to the great brotherhood of the backbone--the sense of motherhood doesn't get beyond looking after the eggs. So with the next higher group to which the frogs belong; and the next, the reptiles. Only with the birds, the next group above the reptiles, do we begin to see what motherhood means. Then at the very top of the list come the class of animals whose very name has "mamma" in it; the "mammalia." Among these, even outside the human race, we find very striking examples of family love and devotion. The gorillas, for instance, although they haven't what one would call an attractive face, are good to their folks. Not only does Mamma Gorilla nurse her babies and carry them in her arms much as a human mother does, and fight and die for them, but a famous African traveller tells of a Mamma Gorilla who stayed safe with the babies in their humble home of sticks in the fork of a tree while Papa Gorilla sat all night at the foot of it, with his back against the trunk, to protect them from a leopard that had been seen prowling around.