108 REPORT—1868. 
cannot it alter the ordinary condition? Dedalus could not throw out wings with 
a wish. What power would favoured individuals of any species have over atmo- 
spheric and other causes that sweep off the rest, leaving those born earlier or later 
to survive? How do both parents obtain the same improved condition at once? 
Do the creatures trouble themselves about their offspring ? 
With regard to the reversion of varieties to their original forms, which Mr. 
Darwin doubts, is not the pansy an example of the difficulty of keeping varieties 
distinct ? and so with other flowers which have a tendency to revert to their inferior 
originals. 
After touching on various other difficulties, the questions were put,—W hence do 
birds derive the migratory impulse ? 
Again, the great object of numberless creatures is the mere perpetuating of their 
kind, which is no sooner attained in the last and briefest stage of existence of the 
majority of insects than they die, leaving their progeny to the same course of long 
existence in the ege, caterpillar, and chrysalis state, and then for a similar destruc- 
tion to follow immediately on the deposit of their eggs. There is no time for the 
supposed exercise of natural selection. They are born, lay their eggs, and die, 
haying been dormant in the egg and chrysalis states. They can only energize in 
the imperfect caterpillar stage. And what thought can the caterpillar take for 
improving its condition in the imago state? Only the perfect insect could desire 
a change, but the perfect insect has no wants to supply, and therefore can wish for 
no change. 
Why do no characteristics of the earliest forms sometimes show themselves in 
animals of the present day ? 
The author believes that the multiplication of races is limited, not by their 
warring against each other, but by laws of nature inscrutable to us. 
On the Zoological Aspect of Game Laws. 
By Professor Atrrep Newron, J.A., PLS. 
The term “Game Laws” seems to express most conveniently all those regula- 
tions which have been adopted in various countries to control the relation of man 
to wild animals, and in this sense the phrase is here used. . 
The subject of the destruction of animals is rarely discussed in the public prints 
without great exaggeration, and the most one-sided views of the question are con- 
stantly presented. Some advantage, however, has arisen from the attention of 
the public having been called to the question. The most effectual protection to 
animals is that afforded by public opinion. A most striking instance of its influence 
is that presented by the fox. Not much more than a century ago, the British 
farmer was only induced to permit the galloping of horses and hounds over his 
corn by the reflection that they were doing him a great service in ridding him of 
a pestilent marauder, and he would hear with grim satisfaction that the scourge 
of his wife’s hen-roost had been run into, or he would willingly at a vestry-meeting 
pass the churchwardens’ accounts giving rewards for the destruction of a vixen 
and her cubs among’ other so-called vermin. Now-a-days the British farmer is 
generally in the first flight of the horsemen, and the fox has no friend so staunch. 
A similar change in public opinion with regard to other wild animals is most 
desirable. The public should feel that they have an interest in the protection of 
wild animals, especially during the season of reproduction. The decrease of these 
animals, however, is often attributed to secondary causes, and not to direct 
slaughter. Man had no great spite against the Bustard or the Great Copper 
Butterfly, but both have been extirpated within living memory—the latter pro- 
bably owing to the drainage of the fens, though the precise mode in which its 
extinction has been accomplished is not exactly known. Both, however, might 
possibly have been preserved by a little judicious care. At any rate, if the progress 
of civilization unconsciously demands some few victims, we should abstain from 
wilfully adding to their number. Mr. Tristram contended, at the last Meeting of 
the Association, that birds of prey were the sanitary police of nature, and that if 
they had existed in their original strength they would have “stamped out” the 
grouse disease, just as the Orders in Council “stamped out” the cattle-plague. 
+t ie paar 
