The dog eat dog

Dillaway Joseph Sawyer, How to make a country place: an account of the successes and the mistakes of an amateur, New York, Orange Judd Company, 1914.

Close scrutiny of stream, branch and trunk revealed the cylindrical stone house of the caddis worm, the shell palace of the brak louse, the wooden burrow of the bumble bee, and the leaf mansion of the cherry leaf twig tier who builds a high class dwelling as insect dwellings rank, , homes doubtless as satisfying to them as the most pretentious dwelling of the race of giants that crush them under foot. The « dog eat dog » spirit of insect life, that indomitable courage in bee, ant, flea, hornet, and mosquito that neither cringes before nor fears its betters if unchecked would soon depopulate the earth.