250 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



looking at the reptilian nature of the dinosaurs, it is quite 

 possible that, like many modern reptiles, they were slow 

 digesters and of sluggish habit, and that the quantity of food 

 which they consumed was not so great as their size would 

 suggest. Nevertheless, the dinosaurs passed away. They 

 proved unable to accommodate themselves to the changed 

 environment, and why ? I think the explanation is to be 

 found in their low intelligence. The crania of these animals 

 show that the brain-cases are small — a sure indication of 

 limited intellect. Physically their frames may have been 

 capable of adjustment to suit an altered environment, but 

 the brain-power necessary to initiate the adjustment was 

 lacking. They were unable to change their old habits of 

 life. 



The same cause will probably explain such apparent 

 anomalies as the entire disappearance of the mammoth from 

 Northern Asia, while its near congener, the elephant, still 

 survives in the south of that continent, although the mam- 

 moth and the elephant were once contemporaries. Heilprin 

 thus propounds the problem : " Both [i.e., both elephant and 

 mammoth] , as far as we are permitted to judge, appear to 

 have been in harmony with their surroundings ; vegetable- 

 feeders, they inhabited regions of sufficiently luxurious vegeta- 

 tion, the one provided with a shaggy coat of hair to protect it 

 from the rigours of the frozen north, and the other, more 

 nearly naked, suited to a home where little or no protection 

 from climatic extremes was necessary. Both, agaiia, were 

 inhabitants of regions where a struggle against the attacks of 

 savage carnivora was a part of their existence, and if any 

 advantage favoured the one above the other in such inter- 

 necine warfare it was on the side of the northern species." 

 But if we assume that the mammoth was less sagacious than 

 the elephant, that it possessed a less flexible mind, a more 

 sluggish disposition, less capacity for adapting its actions to 

 changed circumstaiices, the mystery is explained, and we can 

 understand how, as the environment was transformed with 

 the passing ages, the mammoth disappeared while the elephant 

 survived. 



Viewed from a mental standpoint, the apt phrase "sur- 

 vival of the fittest " acquires a peculiar significance. It is 

 impossible to discover the life-history of a species from its 

 mental powers, or to form a just estimate of the part played 

 by any particular animal in the long procession of life with- 

 out taking into account the peculiar mental capacity of the 

 species as well as of the individual animal. It may be, also, 

 that what I will term the collective mind of a species exhausts 

 its powers of adaptation in the course of time, and that it then 

 refuses any longer to respond to the pressure of outward 



