Jeri Fleischer, age 11, of Portland, Maine, for the question:

What is the most useful animal in the world?

The animals of the world take turns at playing this important role. At certain times or in certain places, any one of them may be the star of the show. In the sandy Sahara the camel may be the most useful animal. He travels farthest and faster and carries the heaviest loads over the desolate wasteland. The hoity toity camel also provides meat, leather and silky hair which can be woven into cloth. His wife provides milk, cheese and a kind of buttery fat.

On the high dry shoulders of the Andes, the llama may be manta useful friend. He too carries burdens and provides meat and leather. This hardy fellow can work with man in the high craggy regions where no other animal can be trusted.

In our temperate regions, there was a time when the horse was manta most useful animal. He carried man and his burdens and helped plow the fields. But the age of machinery has now taken over most of his work. We might say that nowadays the cow is our most useful animal. She provides meat and leather and also our milk, butter and cheese. But where would Bossy be without the bees? Yes, the bees.

Think of the last apple you ate. It developed from an apple blossom and that little pink flower needed the help of a bee before it could grow into an apple. The bee, out shopping the orchard for sweet nectar, dusted our blossom with pollen from the anthers of another blossom. Bees and other insects are necessary to fertilize the clover, the corn and all sorts of other grasses   which brings us back to Bossy. To her, the most useful animals may be the bees and other insects which help pollinate the plants on which she feeds.

Since Bossy is so useful to us, so then are these insects.

And this idea can lead us to a long chain of events   a vast and complicated system of give and take. Most insects live on plant juices or on other insects. Plants, of course, are fed by the soil and this brings us to about a million, million most useful animals. For soil is a mixture of powdered rock and decaying material   both plant and animal. Almost every animal that ever lived on the dry land helped make the soil richer. Chipmunks, raccoons, mice, frogs and birds are but a few of the soil makers. The humb la earthworm helps drain the soil and keep it crumbly. Countless bacteria in the soil work to break down decaying material into chemicals to feed generations of more plants. All of these creatures play a vital role in the scheme of nature which supports Bossy the cow, Since all of them are necessary to keep the world going, who can say which of them is the most useful animal? Andy certainly cannot choose one.