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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



inhabit tlie world of atoms. Stars above them, tbe ground beneath 

 them, that is ilieir world as it is ours. That we just happen to 

 exist on the earth is a matter of comparative indifference. No 

 matter where we might be, our astronomers would always inves- 

 tigate the starry firmament, our chemists and physicists would 

 divide bodies into molecules and atoms. Everywhere the suns as 

 the atoms would pursue their courses in obedience to the same 

 laws, everywhere two sides in the triangle would be greater than 

 the third, and everywhere twice two seconds would make four. 

 That is the law for the giants and the dwarfs, the law beyond 

 which we shall never be able to rise. 



EVOLVING THE CAMEL. 



By GKANT ALLEN. 



AS I sauntered to-day down the Rue dTsly, on evolutionary 

 thoughts intent, I met a caravan of camels, in long single 

 file, coming in from the desert with their bales of merchandise. 

 Poor, weary creatures they looked, in all conscience, their humps 

 shrunken to mere bags of loose skin, and their patient faces bear- 

 ing all too openly the marks of their long and toilsome journey 

 across the hill country. At their head stalked a lordly Arab in a 

 dirty white burnous ; drivers and attendants of lesser station fol- 

 lowed in the rear with a tread as stately and solemn as the camels' 

 own. For, dejected and foot-sore though they all were, men and 

 beasts had alike even so the free and firm step of the open desert. 

 Little Moorish children from the dark shops ensconced in the 

 wall ran out with childish delight and clapping of hands to see 

 them pass ; women with their faces muffled up to the eyes turned 

 timidly to give them a casual glance ; and even old Hamid Abd- 

 er-Rahman himself, sitting cross-legged on his bench before his 

 cup of coffee in the open bazaar, deigned to remove his pipe from 

 his mouth one moment and remark to Omar on the divan beside 

 him that prime dates were coming in from the oases very well 

 this season. 



As for me, standing there in my alien garb, I rejoiced in soul 

 that I had seen a caravan, and could forthwith begin philosophiz- 

 ing on camels. " I could have played on any timbrel," says the 

 poet at the Zoo, " For joy that I had seen a whimbrel." And I 

 could have burst prosaic trammels, for joy that I had seen those 

 camels. Everybody knows, of course, the famous story of the 

 German student who evolved the camel from his own inner con- 

 sciousness. Now, that mode of evolving a species I hold to be 

 illegitimate ; you should always draw your animal from the life. 



