230 STRA Y FEA THERS FROM MANY BIRDS. 



race is rapidly absorbing its Caucasian ally, and will 

 eventually work its extinction in this country by inter- 

 breeding with it. Of course these remarks on the 

 Pheasant only apply to those birds found in the 

 British Islands where the two races have been brought 

 into contact by man ; their natural habitats are too 

 widely separated to admit of any such intermarrying. 



The colossal dimensions of many plants and animals 

 which grew upon and roamed about the world during 

 the remote ages of the Secondary and Tertiary periods 

 furnishes us with much material for speculative thought. 

 Compared with them, the race of living organisms upon 

 the world to-day are insignificant indeed, and we are 

 apt to ask ourselves the question : Has Life on the 

 planet Earth already reached and passed the meridian 

 of its splendour, and is it now slowly on the decline 

 through the period of the world's hoary antiquity? 

 Who shall not say the Life around us now, varied and 

 beautiful though it is, and still endowed with wonderful 

 vitality and richness, is but the fragment after all of 

 that grandly magnificent Life prevailing in the distant 

 past ? Animal and vegetable life in those far-off ages 

 existed in such gigantic forms that the prevailing 

 conditions of its existence must have been totally 

 different from any with which we are familiar. Such 

 huge organisms denote a high state of development, an 

 abundance and a wealth of life very different to the 

 present time. The incessant reckless persecution by 



