MUTUAL DESTRUCTION AMONG ANIMALS. 333 



remarked in reply to a query as to what he thought of the 

 possibility of a universal peace " It is a dream," he said, 

 " and not even a beautiful dream. " Everything in Nature 

 seems to tell us that the great Field Marshal was right. 

 In every department of Nature we see that life is a 

 perpetual warfare a struggle for existence in which 

 the strongest, and therefore the fittest, survives, and 

 the weaker perishes, and so it will ever be. 



The great traveller and careful observer of Nature, 

 the late Sir Samuel Baker, who has lately passed away, 

 has given us an admirable illustration of this in the 

 closing paragraphs of his last work, entitled "Wild 

 Beasts and their Ways." "The empty stomach must 

 be filled (he says), therefore one species devours the 

 other. The fowl destroys the worm. The hawk destroys 

 the fowl. The cat destroys the hawk. The dog kills 

 the cat. The leopard kills the dog. The lion kills the 

 leopard, and the lion is slain by man. Man appears 

 upon the scene of general destruction as the greatest 

 of all destroyers." * 



How truly man may be called "the greatest of all 

 destroyers," only those who have made acquaintance with 

 "the Wilderness and its Tenants," can form any ade- 

 quate conception ; for under their own eyes as it w T ere, 

 they have seen mighty continents stripped of their 

 primeval inhabitants; vast hunting grounds where not 

 a head of game remains, many species having become 

 actually extinct; and boundless plains over which, 

 within living memory, herds of beautiful game gam- 

 bolled in countless numbers, now silent as the tomb. 

 It will be needless to do more than cite the instances 



* Wild Beasts and their Ways, by Sir Samuel W. Baker, Vol. ii, 

 p. 376 (Concluding Paragraph). 



