EACH AFTER ITS KIND 



The ground-dwellers, such as woodchucks and 

 prairie-dogs and gophers, have many similar habits, 

 as have the tree-dwellers and the hares and rabbits. 

 That any of these rodent groups will branch again 

 and develop a new species is in harmony with the 

 doctrine of evolution. But these evolutionary proc- 

 esses are so slow that probably the whole span of 

 human history would be inadequate to measure one 

 of them. 



Nearly all the animal forms that we know are 

 specialized forms, like our tools and implements 

 shaped for some particular line of activity. Man is 

 the most generalized of animals; his organization 

 opens to him many fields of activity. The wood- 

 pecker must peck for his food, the kingfisher must 

 dive, the flycatcher must swoop, the hawk must 

 strike, the squirrel must gnaw, the cat must spring, 

 the woodcock must probe, the barnyard fowls must 

 scratch, and so on, but man is not thus limited. His 

 hands are tools that can be turned to a thousand 

 uses. They are for love or war, to caress or to smite, 

 to climb or to swim, to hurl or to seize, to delve or 

 to build. 



The organization of most animals has special 

 reference to their mode of getting a living. That is 

 the dominant need, and stamps itself upon every 

 organism. 



Man is a miscellaneous feeder and a world-wide 

 traveler, hence all climes and conditions are his. 

 56 



