HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



20£ 



WILD BEASTS AND SNAKES. 



By MAJOR HOLLAND. 



AS it ever struck you 

 what a very import- 

 ant part these ter- 

 rible creatures play 

 in this world, con- 

 sidering them only 

 in their relation to 

 mankind ? We meet 

 with thousands of 

 worthy steady-going 

 who are fully per- 

 in their own minds, 

 that not only all things terres- 

 trial, but even the sun itself 

 and all the host of heaven, 

 were evoked and established 

 solely and exclusively for the 

 use, delectation, and gratifica- 

 tion of a certain featherless 

 biped of the class Mammalia. 

 The serene conceit of this 

 calm assurance amuses us, 

 although the unfathomable 

 selfishness that underlies the 

 notion is apt to provoke us. 

 They have read that at the 

 time of the covenant with Noah, the beasts were 

 placed under the dominion of man, and they main- 

 tain that it is wicked to suppose that mere brutes, 

 which were " sent " for man's use, can be of any 

 use whatever to the great Giver of life, and that 

 without them there would be a gap, a want, a 

 disturbance in the balance of the graud Koajxoe, in 

 which Homo is but one of many constituents. 



"To an uncivilized man no proposition appears 

 more self-evident than that our world is the great 

 central object of the Universe. Around it the sun 

 and moon appear alike to revolve, and the stars 

 seem but inconsiderable lights destined to garnish 

 the firmament. Erom this conception there naturally 

 follow a crowd of superstitions, which occupy a con- 

 spicuous place in the belief of every early civilization. 

 No. 84. 



Man being the centre of all things, every startling 

 phenomenon has some bearing upon his acts. The 

 eclipse, the comet, the meteor, or the tempest, are 

 all intended for him. The whole history of the 

 Universe centres upon him, and all the dislocations 

 and perturbations it exhibits are connected with 

 his history." 



The science of Astronomy has cut away the false 

 foundation of this human egotism, and while un- 

 folding before us a truer conception of the im- 

 mensity of the Universe, and proving that our 

 world is but an infinitesimal fraction in creation, as 

 undistinguished by its position as by its magnitude, 

 it has forced upon man a truer estimate of his own 

 insignificance ; he no longer believes that the 

 planets, like celestial midwives, preside over his 

 birth, that the Pleiades are interested in his love 

 affairs, that Orion, the armed and belted warrior, is 

 mixed up with the perils of his manhood, and that 

 his own petty individual career is " linked with the 

 march of worlds, the focus towards which the ini- 

 fluences of the most sublime of created things con- 

 tinually converge." Having been taught tins some- 

 what depressing lesson of his own littleness, he may 

 next begin to suspect that the other animals which 

 dwell upon the obscure planet Terra may, perhaps, 

 be of a little more importance in the eyes of their 

 Maker than he at first imagined, and that He may 

 have given them offices to perform on His own 

 account, altogether apart from the interests and 

 advantages of man, who is not the only one of His 

 creatures for whom He cares. 



We well remember an old Scotch "Elder," an 

 austere dogmatic old gentleman, with much faith 

 in the efficacy of mortifying the flesh, or who was 

 at any rate zealous and earnest in recommending 

 self-inflicted discomfort as an infallible spiritual 

 nostrum for others, who while arguing from Genesis 

 c. ix.. vv. 2 and 3, that the antediluvians were all 

 vegetarians, and that animal food was first used 

 after the descent from the ark, became alarmingly 

 "exercised" all of a sudden over the fourth verse. 



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