234 THE LAW. 



South America, in Southern Africa, in Australia, and in 

 New Zealand, by the extirpation, the introduction, and the 

 interchange of species ! With the exception of the dingo, 

 or problematically native dog, no placental mammal was 

 known in Australia, which lay like a belated outlier of 

 secondary life, at the time of its discovery by European 

 navigators ; and now most of the quadrupeds of Europe 

 are there thriving and increasing amazingly. When we 

 turn to the New World we find the same process on an 

 older and larger scale. All the domestic animals of Europe, 

 naturally unknown in America, have firmly taken root in 

 that continent, and many of them now roam in a wild state 

 as freely as if they had been indigenous to the country. 

 Even the " pests and vermin " of the Old World have in- 

 sensibly found their way to the New ; and the New has 

 not been slow in making reprisals on the Old by the trans- 

 mission of such unwelcome settlers. In the fulfilment of 

 this great law of natural progress, the inferior races of his 

 own kind are also vanishing before the civilisation of the 

 higher ; and, however much our sympathies may be excited 

 by the fact, their continuance would be only to retard that 

 Divine scheme of advancement to which everything above, 

 beneath, and around us has ever been incessantly tending. 

 No scheme of benevolent enlightenment can ever avert 

 the fate of the natives of New Zealand and Australia ; 

 no project of civilisation, however ingenious, postpone the 

 doom of the Red Indian. As the waves of Progress have 

 successively swept away the nationalities, pre-historic and 

 historic, of Asia and Europe, so the same tide is irresist- 

 ibly swelling towards the obliteration of mental and moral 

 inferiority in other regions. The order has gone forth from 

 the beginning : its execution is inevitable. 



Observe, then, what an amount of extirpation, inter- 

 change, and transmission of species has been effected by 



