The Decticus: his Instrument 



less well-endowed by their more highly-gifted 

 rivals? Is it permissible to doubt, when the 

 evolutionists talk to us of the survival of 

 the fittest? Yes, indeed it is ! 



We are told as much by a certain Libellu- 

 la of the carboniferous age (Meganeura 

 Monyi, BRONG.), measuring over two feet 

 across the wings. The giant Dragon-fly, 

 who terrified the small winged folk with her 

 sawlike mandibles, has disappeared, whereas 

 the puny Agrion, with her bronze or azure 

 abdomen, still hovers over the reeds of our 

 rivers. 



So have her contemporaries disappeared, 

 the monstrous sauroid fishes, mailed in 

 enamel and armed to the teeth. Their 

 scarce successors are mere abortions. The 

 splendid series of Cephalopods with parti- 

 tioned shells, including certain Ammonites of 

 the diameter of a cartwheel, has no other 

 representative in our present seas than that 

 modest fireman's helmet, the Nautilus. The 

 Megalosaurus, a saurian twenty-five yards 

 long, was a more alarming figure in our 

 country-sides than the Grey Lizard of the 

 walls. One of man's contemporaries, that 

 monumental beast the Mammoth, is known 

 only by his remains; and his near kinsman 

 273 



