270 BIG ANIMALS 



strong. Brain counts for more than muscle, and mind has 

 gained the final victory over mere matter. Goliath of Gath 

 has shrunk into insignificance before the Gatling gun ; as 

 in the fairy tales of old, it is cunning little Jack with his 

 clever devices who wins the day against the heavy, clumsy, 

 muddle-headed giants. Nowadays it is our ' Minotaurs ' 

 and ' Warriors ' that are the real leviathans and behemoths 

 of the great deep ; our Krupps and Armstrongs are the 

 fire-breathing krakens of the latter-day seas. Instead of 

 developing individually into huge proportions, the human 

 race tends rather to aggregate into vast empires, which 

 compete with one another by means of huge armaments, 

 and invent mitrailleuses and torpedos of incredible ferocity 

 for their mutual destruction. The dragons of the prime 

 that tare each other in their slime have yielded place to 

 eighty-ton guns and armour-plated turret-ships. Those are 

 the genuine lineal representatives on our modern seas of 

 the secondary saurians. Let us hope that some coming 

 geologist of the dim future, finding the fossil remains of 

 the sunken ' Captain,' or the plated scales of the ' Comte 

 de Grasse,' firmly embedded in the upheaved ooze of the 

 existing Atlantic, may shake his head in solemn deprecation 

 at the horrid sight, and thank heaven that such hideous 

 carnivorous creatures no longer exist in his own day. 



