4 INTRODUCTION 



the winterless Torrid zone is most luxuriant ; giant trees 

 interlace their crowns, while underneath in the sombre 

 shade is a tangle of undergrowth, through which only 

 axe and billhook can make a path. Nutritious food, too, 

 is to be had for the mere gathering. In the Temperate 

 regions vegetation is less profuse, and summer changes 

 to winter, making it necessary for vegetable food to be 

 cultivated and stored for use when the soil refuses to afford 

 further supplies. In the Frigid zones, Nature's garb be- 

 comes increasingly scanty as we approach the Poles ; the 

 stunted trees give place to shrubs ; the verdant green of 

 the grass declines until mosses and lichens are the highest 

 forms of vegetable life ; and all beyond is nothing but ever- 

 lasting ice and snow. 



Vegetation is organic ; it is alive. We can watch a plant 

 spring into life from a tiny seed ; we can see it put forth 

 its tender shoot ; and can study the later development 

 of stem and leaves and flower and fruit. There is nothing 

 in the whole realm of nature more mysterious than this 

 vital principle of life. But though plants have life they are 

 not sentient ; they possess no faculty of sensation and 

 perception ; they can neither see, speak, hear, taste, nor 

 feel unless we except a few remarkable insect-eating plants. 

 They do not themselves possess the power of movement 

 beyond that which is embodied in the action of growth ; 

 they must perforce remain where they have taken root, even 

 though their situation prove unsuitable to their development 

 or become inimical to their very existence. 



On the fifth day of the creation God said, ' Let the waters 

 bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, 

 and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firma- 

 ment of heaven.' And the next day ' God made the beast 

 of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, 

 and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his 

 kind : and God saw that it was good.' 



The earth thus became peopled with beings, organised 

 and living and sentient. On every side resounded the 

 voices of creatures as varied in size and form as they 

 were complex in nature. To every land region were given 

 the animals best fitted to make their homes there, according 



