In a curious and instructive book which we have just read, entitled Nature’s Teachings, by Mr Wood, we are shewn that scientific inventions, no matter how original and ingenious they may appear to be, have each and all been anticipated in the world of nature.

Countless inventions have been made by man without his having any knowledge of the fact that the machine which in its first idea sprang from a single brain, and was afterwards, during the progress of time, slowly improved and perfected perhaps by many successive generations of inventors, had been in use in nature in a more perfect form than art could accomplish, for ages before man existed on the earth. There is scarcely a principle or part in architecture that has not its natural parallel—walls, floors, towers, doors and hinges, porches, eaves, and windows; thatch, slates, and tiles, girders, ties, and buttresses, bridges, dams, the pyramid, and even mortar, paint, and varnish, are all there. The Eskimo snow-house is an exact copy of the dwelling the seal builds for her tender young; the wasp’s nest is composed of several stories supported on numerous pillars. The well-known instance of the building of the Crystal Palace on a ‘new principle,’ by Sir Joseph Paxton, is mentioned by the author, and is one of the many cases where man has confessedly copied nature in art; for that beautiful structure of iron and glass is simply an adaptation of the framework of the enormous leaves of the Victoria regia plant, which, owing to its formation, combines great strength with great apparent fragility. The present Eddystone lighthouse, which has so long withstood the force of the waves, was constructed in 1760 by Smeaton on an entirely new idea, the model being taken from a tree trunk, and the stones of which it was built being strengthened by being dovetailed into one another, as is the case with the sutures of the skull.

The study of the eye of man, as well as of birds, quadrupeds, and insects, has shewn how the most beautiful and gradually improved inventions, such as the telescope, microscope, pseudoscope, stereoscope, multiplying glass, &c., had already been perfected in nature for ages. By the combination of a few prisms and a magnifying glass, is produced that most wonderful of all optical instruments, the spectroscope, which equally reveals to us the constituents of the most distant stars or the colouring matter of the tiniest leaf; and yet the prismatic colours developed by this marvellous instrument have existed equally within the glorious arch of the rainbow and in the tiniest dew-drop as it glitters in the rising sun, ever since the sun first shone and the first rain fell.

In the arts of peace, we must look to the animal world for the most perfect specimens of tools for digging, cutting, or boring. No spade is equal to the foot of the mole; and our hammers and pincers look clumsy indeed beside the woodpecker’s beak or the lobster’s claw. Moreover, the dwellings in the construction of which such tools are employed, are models of beauty and ingenuity. Symmetrically shaped pottery made of moulded mud or clay is found in Nature in the form of birds’ and insects’ nests; in the jaws of the skate is found the crushing-mill, and in the tooth of the elephant the grindstone. In the ichneumon fly and the grasshopper was perfected from the first the modern agricultural improvement on the hand-dibble, the seed-drill. It is only of late years that the use of the teasel has been superseded by machinery; and brushes and combs, buttons, hooks, eyes, stoppers, filters, &c. are all found in Nature. The principle of the diving-bell and air-tube exists in varieties of insects; birds make beds and hammocks and even sew, and the bower-bird emulates us in the construction of ornamental bowers and gardens. Graceful fans exist in plants and insects, cisterns in the traveller’s tree and the camel’s stomach, and natural examples of the balloon and parachute.

In other varieties of art, Nature has stolen a march on man; certain insects make paper of different textures; the art known as ‘nature-printing’ was anticipated in the coal measures. Star-stippling, as now used in engraving to produce extra softness of effect, exists in utmost perfection in every flower petal. The caddis-worm, common in all our fresh waters, constructs for itself a circular window-grating which admits the water and yet protects the pupa from injury, an apparatus exactly like the wheel-windows of a Gothic building. There is a bird in South Africa, the Sociable Weaver-bird, which may be looked upon as a dweller in cities, each pair, up to the number of perhaps three hundred, building its own nest; while the whole community unite to form a common roof or covering of thatch made from a coarse kind of grass, to protect their habitations from the heavy tropical rains. The Driver-ants, also found in Africa, are so sensitive to the fierce heat of the sun, that when on their marches they are obliged to cross open ground, ‘they construct as they go on, a slight gallery which looks very much like the lining of a tunnel stripped of the surrounding earth;’ and if they come to thick grass which makes a shelter for them, they take advantage of it, and only resume the tunnel when they emerge on the other side. Not less wonderful than any of these are the Trap-door spiders, of which mention has been before made in this Journal. In making their nests, they begin by sinking a shaft in the ground; it is then lined with a silken web, and closed by a circular door, which can scarcely be distinguished from the moss and lichens which grow around. The hinges are most exactly fitted, and the spider has an extraordinary power of closing his door from the inside, and resisting all intrusion.

It is curious that as we advance in the scale of creation these wonderful dwellings cease. Strange to say, the creature which roams at will through the forest, and has no settled resting-place, is higher in the scale of life—according to the recognised scheme of naturalists—than the animal that is mechanically capable of constructing the most perfect abode!

Mr Wood reminds us that though the march of Science has destroyed much of our belief in the sweet old tales of fairyland, yet she has given us ample compensation, inasmuch as the ‘fairy tales of science’ are in reality more full of grace and poetry than any of the myths that delighted our childhood. And many of the forms which meet us, if we apply ourselves to the study of natural history, are more full of quaint or graceful fancy than the wildest tales that have ever stirred the imagination of an Eastern story-teller. What can be more beautiful than the little Velella, a sea-creature like a circular raft, with an upright membrane answering to a sail; ‘semi-transparent, and radiant in many rainbow-tinted colours.’ What more grotesque than the Archer-fish, ‘which possesses the curious power of feeding itself by shooting drops of water at flies, and very seldom fails to secure its prey;’ or the Angler-fish, which is endowed by Nature with a rod and bait ready adjusted. This remarkable creature has an enormous mouth; on the top of its head are certain prolonged cane-like filaments, beautifully set in a ring and staple joint, so as to turn every way; and at the end of these singular appendages is a little piece of flesh, which when waved about, looks like a living worm, and attracts the fish, which is then ingulfed in the huge jaws of this natural angler.

Many interesting forms come to us from the water-world, suggestive of rafts, boats, oars, and anchors. An insect called the Water-boatman is itself both boat and oars, besides being its own passenger; the legs with which it rows are fashioned in most exact resemblance to the blade of an oar; or we should rather say that the blade of an oar resembles the leg of this Water-boatman. That fragile creature the Portuguese Man-of-war, which traverses the surface of the ocean like a bubble, and can at pleasure distend itself with air and float, or discharge the air and sink, shews us the principle of the life-dress in which Captain Boyton made his daring passage across the Channel. Cables too we have in plenty: the Pinna, a kind of mussel, anchors itself to some rock or stone with a number of silk-like threads spun by itself; and the Water-snail moors itself, perhaps to a water-lily leaf, by means of a gelatinous thread, slight, almost invisible, yet very strong, which it can elongate at pleasure.

In connection with this there is a very curious account of a spider, which shews a marvellous power of adaptation. Its wheel-like net was in danger from a high wind. ‘The spider descended to the ground, a depth of about seven feet, and instead of attaching its thread to a stone or plant, fastened it to a piece of loose stick, hauled it up a few feet clear of the ground, and then went back to its web. The piece of stick thus left suspended, acted in a most admirable manner, giving strength and support, and at the same time yielding partly to the wind. By accident the thread became broken, and the stick, which was about as thick as an ordinary pencil, and not quite three inches in length, fell to the ground. The spider immediately descended, attached another thread, and hauled it up as before. In a day or two, when the tempestuous weather had ceased, the spider voluntarily cut the thread and allowed the then useless stick to drop.’ The plan here adopted by the spider is frequently followed by fishermen who during stormy weather at sea, ride out the gale by attaching the boat to their yielding nets.

It is natural to expect that in the arts of war and self-defence Nature should shew us an infinite variety; and man has not been slow in using his powers to adapt the same principles to his own use. If man has armed himself with spears or daggers, if he has dug pitfalls or set traps in hunting, his most deadly contrivances are but feeble adaptations of the weapons, offensive and defensive, with which Nature has endowed her offspring. We are prepared to find the serpent’s fang a terrible instrument; and we are not surprised that the piercing apparatus and sheaths of gnats and fleas, or the lancets of mosquitoes when magnified, are dangerous and blood-thirsty; but it is curious to find how many of these deadly weapons belong to the vegetable world. The sword-grass has a notched blade which, when magnified, is almost exactly the same as the shark-tooth sword of Mangaia. There are nettles whose sting is sufficiently venomous to cause violent pain, inflammation, cramp, and even death; and it is well known that some of the most graceful of plants, such as Venus’s Fly-trap, which is common in the Carolinas, and the Drosera or Sundew, one of our British plants, are in fact nothing but skilful traps to catch and digest unwary insects.

Some of the most curious of natural defences are those which simulate some form quite different from the true character of the creature. We are tempted to think of the Mighty Book of Michael Scott, in which was

And Nature, in her turn exercising her powerful glamour, can make a caterpillar seem a twig, or a moth look exactly like a withered leaf. The Spider-crab might be taken for a moving mass of zoophytes and corallines, so thickly is its shell covered with extraneous growths. The Leaf-insects are so exactly like leaves that the most experienced eye can scarcely distinguish them from the leaves among which they are placed. We must all have noticed other instances in which the colours of insects, and also the plumage of birds, harmonise in a wonderful way with the scenes in the midst of which they are placed. Indeed there seems no end to the resemblance which may be traced between the works of Nature and those of man. Many of the most obvious of these strike us with fresh surprise when we find the comparison carefully drawn out. What a freak of Nature, for instance, are the aphides, the milk-cows of a species of ant; or the tailor-bird, ‘which sews leaves together by their edges, and makes its nest inside them!’ It is sufficiently strange too, to remember that the elaborate process of paper-making was carried on by the wasps, ages before it was known to the Chinese.

One of the most powerful of all natural forces is that of electricity; and it is at present so little understood, and so full of mystery, that we may perhaps suppose that many of the most important discoveries of the future must lie in that direction. But Nature has known how to turn this as well as her other powers to her own use. She has her living galvanic batteries, such as the torpedo and the electric eel, both of which secure their prey by paralysing it with their electric discharges. And the light of the glow-worm and that of the fire-fly, though hitherto it has been a puzzle to naturalists, may, there is little doubt, be referred to animal electricity.

After a careful perusal of the book, we are convinced that the more closely the connection between Nature and human inventions is observed, the more perfect and the more numerous will further discoveries be. Endowed with high moral capabilities of truth and justice, and benevolence; gifted with reasoning faculties, which enable him to observe, to argue, to draw conclusions, it is for man himself to work according to the same laws which, unconsciously to themselves, govern the organisations of the lower animal, and the vegetable world.