220 Zoology as Related to Evolution. 



ting hen hatch the chickens." And that is what Nature did 

 in hatching the chicken qualities of her myriad creatures in 

 the early spring of life used not her thinking man, but her 

 brooding hens to be their incubator. And slow and mud- 

 dle-headed as they were, how grand is the resulting body 

 which has come out of their nest ! How supple and varied 

 its powers, how marvelous its organization ! What a strain 

 it has stood of battle-fields and long abuses and accidents 

 by field and flood, what a foundation proved on which to 

 build the enormous structure of mind, what a new signifi- 

 cance given to the pious hymn of good old Dr. Watts that 

 alike saint and scientist can for once unite in singing 



" Fearful and wondrous is the skill that molds 



Our body's vital plan, 



And from the first dim hidden germ unfolds 

 The perfect limbs of man ! " 



And with all the work there is still before it as the agent 

 of mind, all the business cares and social problems and 

 weights of philosophy and science, all the marvels of our 

 coming civilization, that are yet to be piled up on its brain, 

 who shall say it is a particle too strong, who feel that those 

 old brutes with their myriad years took for its building 

 one hour too much, who not fear, with it breaking down so 

 often even now, that the future may show that those Ter- 

 tiary anthropoids who put on it its final touches before the 

 superstructure of reason was begun, hurried up their part of 

 the work a little too fast ? 



Nor is it body alone that man owes to the brutes. In 

 them, too, were laid all the great foundation stones of mind, 

 heart, and soul ! And how far back in their blood do some 

 of the qualities reach which seem now to be most distinct- 

 ively the badges of human superiority ! Little did that old 

 amphibian think, when he saw under far Devonian skies the 

 fish-fins with which he had come out of the water separate 

 into the ten phalanges of his fore limbs, that he was laying 

 the foundations of an arithmetic that was to count at last 

 the stars of heaven with its digits and measure the distances 

 of Sirius and the nebula? with its multiple; little those 

 " dragons of the prime that tare each other in their slime " 

 imagine that out of their conflicts they were storing up in 

 their blood a courage, energy, and pluck that were to fight 

 the great battles of liberty when bayonets were to be the 

 claws and steam rams the tusks, and win victories for truth 



