Ill Manning' s ' Old New Zealand ' 325 



get them one small atom farther, and the effort to 

 screw them one note higher is sure to snap the 

 string, possibly with a parting twang more or less 

 melodious, but so certainly as to prevent its ever 

 discoursing any more music. 



It is in the study of these arrested developments, 

 this embryology, this eggdom, of the human race, 

 that we are to find the bricks for other men to build 

 with, if we distrust our own powers of architecture. 

 And we must study hard and sharp if we are going 

 to make a decent stack for the burner, for the races 

 which have already gone down among the Dodos are 

 terribly numerous, many leaving a hint of their past 

 existence behind them ; — an infinite many, none. 

 Think of the memory of a past race, merely surviving 

 in an ancient parrot, who talked a language no one 

 understood, — a strange satire on Human Permanency. 



Still, though many connecting links are missing, 

 oxidised or correlated, here, as in other places, there 

 are impressions enough left on the mud and ooze of 

 time to show that there was once a continuous chain, 

 though possibly, like other chains, the links were 

 separate ; and following it, we may go a good way 

 down, if we cannot get to the very ground-anchor 

 of Eternal Truth. But we must go warily to work, 

 not the mere prospecting of the surface-skimming 

 tourist, but the real good quartz-mining work of that 

 true miner, the true traveller or toiler. The super- 

 ficial and ' fossiking ' tourist wants but small pre- 

 paration, and fewer tools ; he can wash out his little 



