TIME AND CHANGE 



The first horns appear to have been crude, 

 heavy, uncouth, but long before we reach our own 

 geologic era they appear in various species of quad- 

 rupeds, and become graceful and ornamental. How 

 beautiful they are in many of the African antelope 

 tribe! Nature's workmanship nearly always im- 

 proves with time, like that of man's, and sooner 

 or later takes on an ornamental phase. 



The early uncouth, bizarre forms seem to be the 

 result of the excess or surplus of life. Life in remote 

 biologic times was rank and riotous, as it is now, 

 in a measure, in tropical lands. One reason may be 

 that the climate of the globe during the middle 

 period, and well into the third period, appears to 

 have been of a tropical character. The climatic and 

 seasonal divisions were not at all pronounced, and 

 both animal and vegetable life took on gigantic 

 and grotesque forms. In the ugliness of alligator 

 and rhinoceros and hippopotamus of our day we get 

 some hint of what early reptilian and mammalian 

 life was like. 



That Nature should have turned out better and 

 better handiwork as the ages passed ; that she either 

 should have improved upon every model or else dis- 

 carded it; that she should have progressed from the 

 bird, half -dragon, to the sweet songsters of our day 

 and to the superb forms of the air that we know; 

 that evolution should have entered upon a refining 

 and spiritualizing phase, developing larger brains 



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