66 BOMBAY DUCKS 



voices as they fly past the abode of the dead. Hard 

 by, from behind a picturesque bamboo clump, ascends 

 the blue smoke from a tiny hamlet. 



Some of the little naked village children are actually 

 playing among the ruins of the tomb. It is an interest- 

 ing sight this. Those children are the sons of the soil, 

 they are little plebeians, descendants of the men who 

 once cringed and cowered before him whose tomb 

 is now a ruin, whose race is extinct, and whose very 

 name has been forgotten. How are the mighty 

 fallen ! 



Is not this a case of the survival of the unfit? Is it 

 not a paradox that the race of puny, ill-fed men should 

 have survived, while that of the warrior chieftain, 

 superior in intellect and physique, should have become 

 extinct ? 



But look! two jackals are making their way out 

 of the cover at the base of the mound. Timid creatures 

 these, they look the picture of cowardice as they sneak 

 along, the tail between the legs. Is this not another 

 instance of the survival of the unfit? How is it that 

 these poor fear-stricken jackals are a flourishing species, 

 found all over India, while mighty animals, such as the 

 elephant, the lion, the giraffe, and the tiger, are fast 

 disappearing from off the face of the earth? The 

 question may be extended. How comes it that rats, 

 mice, moles, rabbits, hares, and the other small fry 

 of the mammalian world hold their own in the struggle 

 for existence, while the mammoth, the mastodon, the 

 glyptodon, the giant sloth and the great pterodactyle 

 reptiles have become extinct ? What mean these para- 



