398 External Changes in Birds, 



Connects each being, greatest with the least ; 

 Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast *; 

 All served, all serving ; nothing stands alone : 

 The chain holds on, and, where it ends, unknown." 



Pope's Essay on Man, Epistle iii. 



* I am unwilling to allow even this harmless line to pass muster without 

 indulging in a few remarks on the distinctness of the human race from all 

 other parts of the animal creation ; a distinctness too little borne in mind 

 by many naturalists. Man alone, of all the countless wonders of creation, 

 though clad in a material frame, the functions of which are necessarily 

 identical with those of other animals, is no part of the mere reciprocal 

 system of nature ; as they are. He alone is bound to no particular 

 locality, but inhabits alike the mountain and the plain, and by contrivance 

 is enabled to endure the fervid heats of tropical climes, and the withering 

 blasts of a polar winter ; traverses in all directions the wide extent of the 

 pathless ocean, interchanges purposely the productions of distant lands, 

 and accommodates the respective soils for their reception. He alone de- 

 generates in climates which supply his every natural want ; and placed as 

 nature formed him, in the richest soil, is a being out of his element, unable, 

 by the mere unassisted use of his own organs, to maintain his existence as 

 a species. He alone studies the complicated laws of matter, that he may 

 wield them at his will. He alone possesses a power of indefinite self-im- 

 provement, and can so communicate his attainments that each generation 

 shall rise in knowledge above the last. He alone has the sense to sow, 

 that he may reap; and, alone, intentionally, and from observation and 

 reflection, opposes obstacles to the course of events in their natural pro- 

 gression ; reduces whole countries to an artificial state ; and systematically 

 increases vastly their capability of yielding sustenance for him, and for 

 those creatures he has taken under his protection. Other races disappear 

 before him, whose existence is at all opposed to his interests, and those 

 alone remain (but oh ! how altered from their former condition !) which 

 minister to his wants and comforts. All other beings are mere creatures 

 of locality, whose agency tends to perpetuate the surrounding system of 

 which they are members; but wherever man appears, with his faculties at 

 all developed, the aspect of the surface becomes changed ; forests yield to 

 his persevering labours; the marshes are drained, and converted into 

 fertile lands : the very climate accordingly changes under his influence, 

 and oftentimes to the extinction of some of the indigenous products of 

 the soil. Does not, then, all this intimate that the human race is no part 

 of the mere mundane system, that its agency tends rather to supersede, 

 and is opposed to, that of the rest of organic nature ? that a time must 

 come, should nought intervene of what in physics we can take no cog- 

 nizance, when the human race, having peopled all lands, shall have increased 

 beyond the means of subsistence ? But alas ! who can dive into futurity ? 

 The same awful Being who first awakened man into existence, in common 

 with the meanest atom, who appointed his destiny upon earth to be so 

 diverse from that of his other creatures, who endowed him alone with a 

 capacity to reflect upon his Maker's goodness and power, may (I make 

 no appeal here to revelation, writing only in the spirit of natural theology) 

 close his non-conforming career, as a species, upon earth, in a manner 

 different from the extinction of other species which yields to the pro- 

 gressive changes of the surface. No naturalist can doubt that this beau- 

 tiful world existed, and was clad in verdure, and inhabited, for countless 

 ages before man became its denizen ; and there are no memorials to indicate 



