148 EXTINCT SPECIES. 



From a bare record of facts contemplate we now our 

 planet as it must have been, when inhabited by the mon- 

 strous birds and reptiles and quadrupeds which preceded the 

 advent of man. Those were times when animated forms at- 

 tained dimensions which are now wholly exceptional. That 

 may be described as the age when physical and physiological 

 forces were dominant, as the force of moral agency dominates 

 over the present, and is destined, as appearances tend to 

 prove, to dominate more fully hereafter. Might it not seem 

 that in nature an economy is recognisable similar to the eco- 

 nomy of human existence ? Can we not recognise an an- 

 tagonism between the development of brute force and of the 

 quality of mind ? Would it not even seem that nature could 

 not at one and the same time develop mental and corporeal 

 giants 1 The physiological reign has only declined to pre- 

 pare the advent of moral ascendancy. Giant bodies seem 

 departing from the earth, and giant spirits commencing to 

 rule. Humanity is progressive : is not this progression made 

 manifest by zoological revelations 1 The first bone-traces of 

 human beings range back to an epoch posterior to the mon- 

 strous quadrupeds entombed in the diluvium. Hereafter 

 giants, probably, will only be seen in the moral world, 

 grosser corporeal giant forms having become extinct. The 

 physical gigantesque is not yet indeed banished from the 

 earth, but the period of its banishment would seem to be at 

 hand. 



Probably all the great birds to which reference has been 

 made were, like the ostrich, incapable of flight. This defect, 

 when contemplated from the point of view suggested by 

 modern classifications, seems one of the most remarkable 

 aberrations of nature of which we have cognisance. For a 

 bird to be deprived of what seems the most essential charac- 

 teristic of bird-life to be banished from the region that we 

 have come to regard as the special domain of bird -life 

 bound to the earth, forced to mingle with quadrupeds seems 



