Zoology as Related to Evolution. 225 



and the millennium of Christianity, which beyond question 

 our existing world is to ripen into before it passes on to its 

 final stage. Mosquitoes may not tune their voices in its 

 dewy airs, nor rattlesnakes join their harps in its choral 

 song, but it is hard to think of a perfect earth, even with its 

 silver questions all settled and its social problems all solved, 

 that is not to be musical with the song of birds, gi-aceful 

 with the forms of quadrupeds, and alive with myriads of 

 the happy things which have labored so long to build it up 

 as hard as it is to think of a flower, however fair, that is 

 not the fairer when encircled with its chaplet of leaves. Its 

 poisonous reptiles, its pestiferous insects, and its more rav- 

 enous and untamable beasts, unrepenting sinners of the 

 swamp and fen, will doubtless die out, for universal salva- 

 tion, however true it may be of man, and even of the old 

 theological serpent, can hardly be stretched out wide 

 enough, even by its most determined advocate, to cover the 

 snake in the grass and the worm in the flesh killed off not 

 so much by human hands as by the earth's changing clime. 

 But with these gone it will be all the easier for its better 

 ones to survive, preserved alike by Nature's softened laws 

 and man's co-operating care. Its woods will still be merry 

 with the frisky squirrel and its airs sweet with the song of 

 birds ; its brooks still alive with the silver gleam of scales 

 and its meadows with their painted butterflies and golden- 

 trousered bees ; its tropics still have their winged rainbows 

 and feathered gems ; and its mountain thrones and courts 

 of snow their eagle kings and nature-ermined lords. The 

 same principle of ripened stock, better living, and more 

 mental activity that operates among men to lay the Malthu- 

 sian specter of over-population some philosophers are now 

 troubled with, will obtain among animals to keep their num- 

 bers from ever crowding the earth. Death will round off 

 their old age with its sleep the same as it will that of human 

 beings even in their perfect state a death as painless as that 

 which the cells of our bodies in passing from living tissue 

 to waste matter already every day undergo. With the 

 earth's grains and fruits perfected and the chemical means 

 discovered of producing artificial nitrogenous foods, all 

 need of their slaughter and all taste for their flesh will 

 have passed away. Othello's occupation in the shambles 

 and at the meat market, as well as his like one on the 

 tented field, will be gone. "We shall look back then on the 

 days of humanity's roast mutton with as much horror as we 



