123 " REPORT— isre. 



two chief zoological events of tlie year, let us see if tliey do not suggest something 

 tliat will not be beneath yoiu- consideration for the remainder of this address. I 

 have spoken of the certainty of the expedition from which we now welcome our 

 li'ieuds being succeeded by others of similar character. We shall hardly be in- 

 dulging any vain imagination if we asli: ourselves what we may look foi-ward to 

 as regards their reports ; and to one point we may perhaps usefully apply ourselves. 



What if a future 'Challenger' shall report of some island, now' known to possess 

 a, rich and varied animal population, that its present fauna has disappeared ? that 

 its only Mammals were feral Pigs, Goats, Rats, and Rabbits— with an infusion of 

 Ferrets, introduced by a zealous " acclimatizer " to checlv the superabundance of 

 the rodents last named, but contenting themselves with the colonists' chickens ? 

 that Sparrows and Starlings, brought from Europe, were its only Land-birds, that 

 the former had propagated to such an extent that the cultivation of cereals had 

 ceased to pay — the prohibition of bird-keeping boys by the local school-board con- 

 tributing to the same eHect— and that the latter ("the "Starlings) having put an end 

 to the indigenous insectivorous birds by consuming their food, had tm-ned their 

 attention to the settlers' orchards, so that a crop of fruit was only to be looked for 

 about once in five years— when the great periodical cyclones had reduced the 

 number of the depredators ? that the Goats had destroye'd one half of the original 

 flora and the Rabbits the rest? tliat the Pigs devastated the potatoe-gardens°and 

 yam-grounds ? This is no fanciful picture. I pretend not to the gift of prophecy ; 

 that is a faculty alien to the scientific mind ; but if we may reason from the 

 known to the unknown, from what has been and from what is to what will be I 

 cannot entertain a doubt that these things are coming to pass ; for I am sure there 

 are places where what is very like them has already happened. 



You may ask why this is so ? why do these lands so speedily succumb to the 

 strangers from beyond sea ? One part of the answer is ready to hand with those 

 who have learned one of the first principles of biology which our great master, 

 Mr. Darwin, has laid down for us. Tlie v.'-eaker, the more generalized forms of 

 life must always make way for the stronger and more speciaUzed. The other part 

 of the answer is supplied by Mr. Wallace ; for no one can have studied his volumes 

 to much purpose without perceiving tliat the inhabitants of oceanic islands and of 

 the southern hemisphere— the great Australian Region especially, and South 

 America not much less, are the direct and comparatively speaking "little-chann-ed 

 descendants of an older, a more generalized and a weaker fauna than are the 

 present inhabitants of this quarter of the globe, which have been, so to speak, 

 elaborated by Nature and turned out as the latest and most perfect samples of her 

 handiwork. 



Set face to face with unlooked-for invaders, and forced into a contest with them 

 from which there is no retreat, it is not in the least surprising that the natives should 

 succumb. They have hitherto only had to struggle for existence with creatures of 

 a like organization ; and the issue of the conflict which has been going on for ages 

 is that, adapted to tlie conditions under which they find themselves, they maintain 

 their footing on grounds of equality among one a'nother, and so for centuries they 

 may have " kept the noiseless tenor of their wav." Suddenly man interferes and 

 lets loose upon them an entirely new race of animals, which act and react in a 

 thousand different fashions on their circumstances. It is not necessary that the 

 new comers should be predacious ; they may be so far void of offence as to abstain 

 from assaulting the aboriginal population ; but they occupy the same haunts and 

 consume the same food. The fruits, the herbage, and other supplies that sufficed 

 to support the ancient fauna now have to furnish forage for tlie invaders as well. 

 Their effects on the flora there is no need for me to trace, since Dr. Hooker ex- 

 pressly made them one of the themes of that discourse to which many of us listened 

 with rapt attention a few years since at this Association. But the consequences of 

 the inva,sion to the native fauna have never been so fullv made known. The new 

 comers are creatures whose organization has been prepared by and for combat 

 throughout generations innumerable. Their ancestors have been elevated in the 

 scale of being by the discipline of strife. Tlieir descendants inherit the developed 

 qualities that enabled those ancestors to win a hard-fought existence when the 

 animals around them were no higher in grade than those among which the de- 



