34 



THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



them worth notice. But a contemplative spirit feels that it 

 would starve without many things which are of no use in 

 the gross sense of the word, and there is much matter for 

 chastening meditation in lizards. If the whole race of them 

 could be wiped out of the earth to-day, exchange would 

 neither rise nor fall, but has not the poet said, 



" Mtn are we, and must grieve when even !he shade 

 Of that which once was great has passed away " ? 



And lizards once were great. They were the aristocracy of 

 the earth. Not in the last century, nor in the Middle Ages, 

 nor even when the Memnonium was in all its glory. In fact 

 the whole of the "Address to a Mummy" feels like a toy 

 sentiment to a mind which has been wandering away into 

 the golden age of lizards. From that distance of time the 

 score or two of paltry centuries that may have passed since 

 the mummy dropped a halfpenny in Homer's hat make a 

 point like one of the fixed stars. They do not subtend any 

 angle on the retina of the imagination. What a strange 

 world there must have been on this same earth of ours in 

 those days ! Did mosquitos as large as sparrows, with 

 voices like tin trumpets, infest the swampy wastes and 

 torment the drowsy megalosaurus, and did the winged 



