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Show 316. larger forest community. In a passage which he removed from the final manuscript of "New Sequoia F o r e s t s , " Muir reasoned about the complaint toward Nature which Lester Ward had made, that Nature was uneconomic. By human standards, the waste of reproductive powers in Nature appeared f a n t a s t i c , yet Muir saw a kind of "mutual aid" in the seeming overproduction of Sequoia seeds. His thinking reveals that he was trying to change the ecological consciousness of his reader: The fact is not however a gloomy one nor does i t indicate the s l i g h t e s t imperfection, for just sufficient are developed for the purposes of the highest cosmic beauty + then nature has a big family to feed while the r e s t are given as food to the birds + s q u i r r e l s + insects - Besides we must not in our own c h i l d i s h outcry of Cui Bono overlook the simple fact that a seq[uoia] seed i s in i t s e l f a most beautiful consummation, + whether colossal t r e e which i t contains is to be called up out - i n t o the l i g h t - , or be doomed to l i e buried in eternal sleep, is a question t h a t only nature can decide. Instead of arguing his t h e s i s d i r e c t l y , he portrayed the l i fe in the forest, where the animals were a l l part of a harmonious pattern of use. The s q u i r r e l was both harvester and planter. The deer were "dainty feeders" who did not destroy l i f e but kept the garden in order. Life fed on l i f e , but not destructively. This answered a question which had troubled Muir through his whole excursion in the Sequoias. For weeks that f a l l he traversed the desolation l e f t by the summer's sheep herds. |