insects

• insects

61:2.4Marked changes were tak­ing place in the fauna of the planet. The sea life was un­der­go­ing great mod­i­fi­ca­tion; most of the pres­ent-day or­ders of ma­rine life were in ex­is­tence, and foraminifers con­tin­ued to play an im­por­tant role. The in­sect life was much like that of the pre­vi­ous era. The Floris­sant fos­sil beds of Col­orado be­long to the later years of these far-dis­tant times. Most of the liv­ing in­sect fam­i­lies go back to this pe­riod, but many then in ex­is­tence are now ex­tinct, though their fos­sils re­main.

59:5.7Very soon there­after the in­sects first ap­peared and, to­gether with spi­ders, scor­pi­ons, cock­roaches, crick­ets, and lo­custs, soon over­spread the con­ti­nents of the world. Dragon flies mea­sured thirty inches across. One thou­sand species of cock­roaches de­vel­oped, and some grew to be four inches long.

81:6.24In­sects are born fully ed­u­cated and equipped for life—in­deed, a very nar­row and purely in­stinc­tive ex­is­tence. The hu­man baby is born with­out an ed­u­ca­tion; there­fore man pos­sesses the power, by con­trol­ling the ed­u­ca­tional train­ing of the younger gen­er­a­tion, greatly to mod­ify the evo­lu­tion­ary course of civ­i­liza­tion.

60:2.6The same po­lar sea that ex­tended so far down over North Amer­ica like­wise cov­ered all of South Amer­ica ex­cept the soon ap­pear­ing An­des Moun­tains. Most of China and Rus­sia was in­un­dated, but the wa­ter in­va­sion was great­est in Eu­rope. It was dur­ing this sub­mer­gence that the beau­ti­ful litho­graphic stone of south­ern Ger­many was laid down, those strata in which fos­sils, such as the most del­i­cate wings of olden in­sects, are pre­served as of but yes­ter­day.

65:2.5Be­fore long the early sin­gle-celled an­i­mal types as­so­ci­ated them­selves in com­mu­ni­ties, first on the plan of the Volvox and pres­ently along the lines of the Hy­dra and jel­ly­fish. Still later there evolved the starfish, stone lilies, sea urchins, sea cu­cum­bers, cen­tipedes, in­sects, spi­ders, crus­taceans, and the closely re­lated groups of earth­worms and leeches, soon fol­lowed by the mol­lusks—the oys­ter, oc­to­pus, and snail. Hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of species in­ter­vened and per­ished; men­tion is made only of those which sur­vived the long, long strug­gle. Such non­pro­gres­sive spec­i­mens, to­gether with the later ap­pear­ing fish fam­ily, to­day rep­re­sent the sta­tion­ary types of early and lower an­i­mals, branches of the tree of life which failed to pro­gress.

59:6.7Through­out these times of cli­matic change, great vari­a­tions also oc­curred in the land plants. The seed plants first ap­peared, and they af­forded a bet­ter food sup­ply for the sub­se­quently in­creased land-an­i­mal life. The in­sects un­der­went a rad­i­cal change. The rest­ing stages evolved to meet the de­mands of sus­pended an­i­ma­tion dur­ing win­ter and drought.

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.