2 EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. i 



tic, and now from the North Sea, at all times of 

 the year; they filled up, as they best might, the 

 gaps made in their ranks by all sorts of under- 

 ground and overground animal ravagers. One year 

 with another, an average population, the floating 

 balance of the unceasing struggle for existence 

 among the indigenous plants, maintained itself. 

 It is as little to be doubted, that an essentially 

 similar state of nature prevailed, in this region, for 

 many thousand years before the coming of Caesar; 

 and there is no assignable reason for denying that 

 it might continue to exist through an equally 

 prolonged futurity, except for the intervention of 

 man. 



Reckoned by our customary standards of 

 duration, the native vegetation, like the " ever- 

 lasting hills " which it clothes, seems a type of 

 permanence. The little Amarella Gentians, which 

 abound in some places to-day, are the descendants 

 of those that were trodden underfoot by the pre- 

 historic savages who have left their flint tools 

 about, here and there; and they followed ancestors 

 which, in the climate of the glacial epoch, probably 

 flourished better than they do now. Compared 

 with the long past of this humble plant, all the 

 history of civilized men is but an episode. 



Yet nothing is more certain than that, meas- 

 ured by the liberal scale of time-keeping of the 

 universe, this present state of nature, however it 

 may seem to have gone and to go on for ever, is 



