54 MAMMALIAN DESCENT. [LeCt. II. 



mena. They remind one of the sudden and mysterious moral 

 perfection of the antediluvian prophet Enoch, of whom it is said, 

 that — " He being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time." 

 There is, however, another way in which the mysterious morpho- 

 logical energy works, so as to force, as in a hothouse, the growth 

 of the young of certain types. This is the case in the highest 

 sorts of birds — the "Altrices," or high-builders — that have tender 

 nestlings. These young, sweltering in their soft nest, and almost 

 smothered by their feathered mother, whose blood is nearly at fever 

 heat, grow and develop at ten times the rate of the young of those birds 

 that make poor nests on the ground ; for those chicks, hatched strong 

 and lusty, grow slowly to perfection. Yet the temperature of the 

 blood itself is apparently equal in both cases, and in both cases 

 affects the temper of the mother-bird. At that time the true maternal 

 courage rages ; at that time " a Wren wUl peck an Estridge ;" and 

 a Hen, the gentlest of mothers when her brood is grown, is like 

 one possessed whilst they are young. 



So we see that Nature fulfils herself in many ways ; her works have 

 not gone on from age to age in tame and cold uniformity, but in the 

 plenitude of her morphological energy she has at sundry times, and 

 in divers manners, burst out into new developments — delivering 

 herself in her mighty energy of myriads of new and wondrous births. 

 Let us imagine ourselves living in the time before the beginning of 

 the reign of the Prototheria, and before the first feathered creature 

 grew, when there were neither birds nor beasts, and to us it seems 

 to be unenlivened gloom ; we have in idea depopulated the planet of 

 almost aU the living forms that make it laugh and sing. The vision 

 is like that of the prophet who — weeping over the desolations of that 

 land which once flowed with milk and honey — says, "I beheld, and, 

 lo, there was no man, and aU the birds in the heavens were fled." 

 Ifow, if for the sake of Biology we should be glad to repeople the 

 earth with the parents of the Prototheria, for the sake of Life we 

 should indeed be sorry to peel away the newer Mammalian faunas 

 until we got to that old core. 



To sum up these Prototherian matters, we may now look at some 

 of the most remarkable characters in the Duckhill and Echidna that 

 are manifestly reptilian, or quasi-reptilian ; — 



1. Jacobson's Organs are about equal in their development to 



