V f - I ' THE OREGON " SUNDAY JOURNAL, ; PORTLAND, SUNDAY MORNING. . OCTOBER: 20, 1907 ; v ; ' J y , v I ' ' , , - ;;..'rrs ';7?'p -.i;;:vr ii - ':" 11 yv. ? C 'AN you imagine an elephant as a pigmy beside a fleaf Then you have never considered the marvelous strength with which tiny insects have been endowed by nature, in proportion to their size. There is nothing more wonderful than this in the domain of animal life. More than two hundred times its own height can the flea leap. At this rate man would be able to skit ov Tower at Paris, which is 9 with little effort. It has been estimated that a certain little beetle, if it attained the size of a cow, with its strength increased in propor tion, could slaughter and carry off a herd of six steers at one sweep. The smaller insects are the stronger they are, as a rule. Had nature been prodigal with them and given them great er size made them, say, 1000 or 1,000, 000 times larger and increased their over the Eiffel jnuscular powers accordingly well, to Q84 feet high, say the least, old tarth would not have been habitable for man. rERCULEAN, strength, then, does not rest In human beings, nor even In the royal mon arch of the Jungle these types of physi cal power are anomalous and false. In the tiniest Insects of the earth, beetle, fleas, and even creatures of the wafer. Is found a strength which. In proportion to the slie of the animal, makes man appear one of the weaklings of creation and such animals as the elephant mere pigmies. If the strength of a little oyster's jaws, for In stanoe,. were gtvtt) to man-In-proportion to his sice, man could hold at arm's length eighty locomotives. If the strength exhibited by a small water seal lop In the muscular resistance of closing Its shell r were given In proportion to man, an acrobat could Juggle balls weighing thirty-four ton's. Certain beetles, If the sixe of a horse, would be able to exert twenty-one times a horse's strength; the little white ants, which build hard mounds of earth, if enlarged to a sise near that of man, would build houses nearly a mile high, beside which the boasted skyscrapers of the present would resemble toadstools. The human mind can hardly conceive a more terrible creature than the 1 ordinary spider grown to the sise of man or larger; it would catch human beings and devour them more easily than the spider does the fly. The mind, br no stretch of Imagination, could a log ovtr twenty-eight feet long and twenty Inches square. This Is practically what the ordinary housefly does when, with Its feet, as you hold it by the wings. It grasps and lifts a match. What would the fly do If It were several hundred or several thousand times larger and Just as pestiferous and tantalls- m4Nf -YC .W'T"". Us 4- ewssff t"- ' ' 1 - i II - mi. I i! .... M tu, V. u vTf.'t r iiiiirri" V ""ci'1 i' ' ' ' v'-r- j;. JH t- --v v f 1'. , .Of V MWNHftillsl U' VC An earwig tan drag six matches with ease. To compete with this little animal. If enlarged to his sise, a draft horse would have to pull 8(0 logs as long and round as himself. " Astounding strength" was discovered among the shellfish. Tremendous force lies in the musoles of the little bivalves which hold fast and tight the closed shell To teat this strength the Belgian naturalist in serted between the two shells of mollusks two hooks, one of which supported the flsb and the other a scale. This scale was gradually loaded with weights until the shells were forced open. Strength is a term hardly to be applied to man when on considers the wonderful power of these creatures of the water. An oyster bore a weight of roas to destroy them. One can conceive the colossal character of this wore when he considers that these houses are formed of bits of mud ofthe sise of the head of a pin, which the little worker carries distances of one to two miles. The armor of steel-clad battleships would not be proof against the porouplne-Uke darts of a little sea creature were its sise anywhere near that of a present-day ship. These little creatures throw out from their bodies myriads of tiny arrows with tremendous energy. Were one of these little fighters the sise of modern ship, or even less, it could sink a fleet of bat tleshlps by its submarine missiles. Birds have possibly greater power. They take long . Journeys, such, for Instance, as crossing the Medlter . ranean, without rest-. This, too, in the face of tha fearful storms that prevail there. As to speed, tha swallow can make from sixty to ninety miles an hour a pace rather humiliating for the automoblllsts. . Power ' is manifested in other ways by insects. .Some of .the beetles, for Instance, have a skin so hard . that it requires-a pin driven by hammer blows to pen etrate it Their hold on life is vastly superior to that of man. ' Nature was exceedingly merciful to man when she restricted the else of suoh powerful little creatures. Were the elephant a pigmy beside, the flea, man would be 'compelled-to -'dwell in hiding from hundreds of insects that he now crashes contemptuously under " foot rWVjai,BSjs CMUaslssWNt6 conceive a mora appalling state of affair than that , which would exist If. small insects grew to the size -.' of man with their present strength increased in , s proportion. ' f; An ordinary cricket, one of those seemingly L - - harmless creatures,: whose only mission in life is to , , . chirp, if grown to human sise, would be invulnera 't ble to tha attacks of a regiment of men. The great shell-like covering of the. head and forepart of the body would withstand the bullets of tbe most pow- arful riflea. This giant cricket, could carry on a campaign of forage and destruction with immu " ulty. JJan would be helplesa r'o man Jiving could hold with bis arms and lega ing as it Is at present? Nightmares of horrors, things more fearful than aught to be seen in an opium dream, would confront us, if many of the ordinary beetles which we now trample under foot had been permitted by nature to grow, to the sise of beasts of the field, and retain proportionate strength. Poe, in his story of "The Sphinx," describes a pleasant apparition compared to what the- ordinary bee tle would be under aucb conditions. Imagine a great creature, with blood-hued, scaled body and sharp horns, with a shield as Impenetra ble as steel over the back, and long legs moving like the pistons and rods of a giant engine, and claws that could crush one as between two sharp saws! Many of the small beetles, if de veloped several thousand or a mil lion times their else, could devour a herd of oxen as readily as the oxen now pluok a bunch of grapes from a vine, and would take jump a mile in length. As tfi creatures of the animal kingdom decrease in size their strength increases proportionately. This, undoubtedly. Is a wise provi sion of nature.: In prehistoric times, however, the leviathans of the sea and the monsters of the land pos sessed incredible strength. Sup pose, as the human . race declines, the - little creatures should grow larger, and, instead of losing their strength, should aia in muscular power! Plateau, a Belgian naturalist of world-wide repute, ha" mad perimenta in testing the strength of in sects and even infinitesimal water creatures, and their pnywcai power la almoat beyond one's comprehension. m.niV1 th 'and roses you will find a ?r? which can jump 100 . T-wI nZ. I ,,a ta etralght line BOO times imately his else T " re approx- ndV'lonV r: nd'.aarat.l,:th. la ii nii.iiT ntuummnr 'wrttan ..rriiT-n1 M ' gnu-n " "f '"r in, . " - - '-- f F' . ' Ill !! K Plateau constructed a very; ingenious apparatus. This consisted of a minute harness, made of two threads, a maH pulley and a little flat plate. The harness was fastened to the lnsect.uid, as it moved about, 'small weights Were placed on the plate ' in the rear. ' This was done until,-the , little creature could draw no more, and its strength was registered. . t : .These experiments showed remarkable results. One beetle, in proportion, possessed twenty-one times the strength of a horse; a bee was proved to be thirty times stronger. The bee pulled a chariot twenty times heavier than. Itself. The majority of specimens tested, weighing a sixth of a gramme, supported weights of ten grammes, amounting to sixty times their own bulk. etrenertb. at tha amiL.. . ' wcurioiy -cne , - . j?xny. mousana or tnese insigniflcant mtie -in-anauer anioaia and insects, aC aeota together would exert the power of one horse.; thirty-seven pounds-before it opened the shelL - To stand a parallel test, a man would have to hold at arm's length forty locomotives in each hand. The Uttle mussel resisted a weight of nearly four bounds. The' average mollusk bore several -hundred times Its weight-some of them BOOT times their weight Fancy an acrobat lifting a weight of 77,000 pounds L Among, the insects no less remarkable power was found a power that taxes one's credulity. White ants build mountains sometimes reaching the height of. sev enteen feet ' r ..... These are so hard and compact in structure that oxen can pass over them without damaging the won derful houses. Imagine a man building a house 1000 times his height, or a mile or over upnard. Among; the most marvelous Insect architects is a . small be which builds a bouse of actual mortar. Oftentimes, these structure weigh, sixty-five pounds,, and are so secure that It is necessary to employ iron , 1