The size of a thing is not always the measure of its
destructiveness. We look at a big battleship and exclaim what
a huge instrument of destruction. Yet the tiny germ called the
tubercle bacillus is so small that it is said that 900 can find
room on the point of a small sewing-needle, and these germs
destroy more lives each year than the mightiest warship could
possibly do in action.
(751)
* * * * *
Sins and faults gradually ruin character, once they begin to ravage, as
the bee-moths ruin the hive of bees:
Death and destruction of the community follow in the train of
the bee-moth. From the eggs hatch little sixteen-footed grubs
that keep well hidden in the cracks, only venturing out to feed
on the wax of the comb nearest them. As they grow they need
more and more wax, but they protect themselves while getting it
by spinning a silken web which prevents the bees from getting
at them. Wherever they go they spin silken lines and little
webs until, if several bee-moths have managed to lay their eggs
in the hive and several hundred of their voracious wax-eating
grubs are spinning tough silken lines and webs through all the
corridors and rooms of the bees’ house, the household duties
get so difficult to carry on that the bee community begins to
dwindle; the unfed young die in their cells, the indoor workers
starve, and the breakdown of the whole hive occurs.--VERNON
L. KELLOGG, “Insect Stories.”
(752)
* * * * *
Character, like corn, may be destroyed, not by the assault of a single
great evil, but by many minute sins and faults. Vernon L. Kellogg
writes thus of corn-root aphids:
I forget how many millions of bushels of corn were raised in
the State of Illinois last year, but there were very many. And
that means thousands and thousands of acres of corn-fields. Now
in all these corn-fields there live certain tiny soft-bodied
insects called corn-root aphids. Their food is the sap of the
growing corn-plants, which they suck from the roots. Altho each
corn-root aphid is only about one-twentieth of an inch long and
one-twenty-fifth of an inch wide, and has a sucking-beak simply
microscopic in size, yet there are so many millions of these
little insects, all with their microscopic little beaks stuck
into the corn-roots, and all the time drinking, drinking the
sap, which is the life-blood of the corn-plants, that they do a
great deal of injury to the corn-fields of Illinois and cause a
great loss in money to the farmers.--“Insect Stories.”
(753)
See VANDALISM.
=Detachment=--See ABSENT-MINDEDNESS.