Nature's Clothing - John Muir

I came across this quote from John Muir in a Sierra Club newsletter and thought it was pretty interesting:

Nature’s Clothing
“Nature is a good mother, and sees
well to the clothing of her many bairns
— birds with smoothly imbricated
feathers, beetles with shining jackets,
and bears with shaggy furs. In the
tropical south, where the sun warms
like a fire, they are allowed to go
thinly clad; but in the snowy northland
she takes care to clothe warmly. The
squirrel has socks and mittens, and a
tail broad enough for a blanket; the
grouse is densely feathered down to
the ends of his toes; and the wild
sheep, besides his undergarment of
fine wool, has a thick overcoat of hair
that sheds off both the snow and the
rain. Other provisions and adaptations
in the dresses of animals, relating less
to climate than to the more mechanical
circumstances of life, are made with
the same consummate skill that
characterizes all the love work of
Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged
rocks, muddy ground, sand beds,
forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc.,
are considered in all their possible
combinations while the clothing of her
beautiful wildlings is preparing. No
matter what the circumstances of their
lives may be, she never allows them to
go dirty or ragged. The mole, living
always in the dark and in the dirt, is
yet as clean as the otter or the wave-
washed seal; and our wild sheep,
wading in snow, roaming through
bushes, and leaping among jagged
storm-beaten cliffs, wears a dress so
exquisitely adapted to its mountain life
that it is always found as unruffled and
stainless as a bird.”