In those wonderful autumn days Adam learned that the antelope could go long without water, that nature had endowed it with great speed to escape the wolves and cats of the desert, that from its prominent eyes it could see in any direction, that its coloring was the protective gray of the sage plains. He learned that the lizard could change its color like the chameleon, adapting itself to the color of the rock upon which it basked in the sun, that it could dart across the sands almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. He learned that the gray desert wolf was a king of wolves, living high in the mountains and coming down to the flats; and there, by reason of his wonderfully developed strength and speed, chasing and killing his prey in the open. He learned that the coyote was an eater of carrion, of rabbits and rats, of bird’s eggs, of mesquite beans, of anything that happened to come its way--a gray, skulking, cunning beast, cowardly as the wolf was brave, able, like the antelope and the jack rabbit, to live without water, and best adapted of all beasts to the desert. He learned that the jack rabbit survived through the abnormal development of his ears and legs--the first extraordinarily large organs built to catch sound, and the latter long, strong members that enable him to run with ease away from his foes. And he learned that the cottontail rabbit lived in thickets near holes into which he could pop, and that his fecundity in reproducing his kind saved his species from extinction. Adam learned about the desert ants, the kangaroo rats, the trade rats, the horned toads, the lizards, the snakes, the spiders, the bees, the wasps--the way they lived and what they lived upon. How marvelously nature adapted them to their desert environment, each perfect, each in its place, each fierce and self-sufficient, each fulfilling its mysterious destiny of sacrificing its individual life to the survival of its species! How cruel nature was to the individual--how devoted to the species! Adam learned that the same fierce life of all desert creatures was likewise manifested in the life of the plants. By thorns and poison sap and leafless branches, and by roots penetrating far and deep, and by organs developed to catch and store water, so the plants of the desert outwitted the beasts and endured the blasting sun and drought. How beyond human comprehension was the fact that a cactus developed a fluted structure less exposed to heat--that a tree developed a leaf that never presented its broad surface to the sun! * * * * *