| Show 1 r Years Old r r A A PECULIAR little animal is discovered in int t Venezuela by scientists from the Field museum museum museum mu- mu seum Chicago They call it Its It's i about about six six- inches t long and looks like a rat The is the only form of animal life that has has existed for years without changing its shape size o or habits Its It's the thc same today as I its ancestors were in the age of fossils It has seen giants like the dinosaurs rs come and go The giants vanished turned to stone became extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago Why did the weak litle survive Because say scientists it lived the simple life The as it went serenely on its way saw strange changes take place in animals as nature worked out her law of evolution It saw monkeys become men if you believe some scientists It saw the horse once small as a cat grow large as nature prepared it to work for man It saw the mammoth shed its hair and become an elephant as the ice age rage ended and the c climate grew warmer It saw adventurous 1 fish turn fins into wings and fly off as birds It saw the giraffe grow a long longs neck to reach the tender lender twigs and leaves in treetops But the went ahead without changing says a recent book by Dr Wilfred H. H Osgood of the Field museum i v The secret of its success is in the simplicity of f its requirements ments It has never to AH X gone exAH ex- ex I ex-I G. G I c rg I never never developed any very special tastes or pec ri s It H never tried any any experiments never went off on n a tangent langent and never took any any chanc chances s. s Conservatives and devotees of the simple life will approve of That But as Osgood points out the by always taking the easiest easiest- and safest way accomplished mere existence and nothing more It was vas the conservative the re rc reactionary reactionary re- re the old fogy of the animal world Other forms of life t took ok a chance They They tried new things They roamed the earth And the result They evolved into h higher gher types with varying degrees of intelligence There here you have the key to progress the progress the key be being ng dissatisfaction with things as they are and a never-ending never experimentation to find something something some some- I. I thing better |
