86 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



considered, at the head of vertebrates. The skele- 

 ton is firm and compact. The muscles are beautiftilly 

 moulded and fitted to the skeleton so as to produce 

 the greatest effect with the least mass and weight of tis- 

 sue. The sense-organs are keen, and the eye and ear 

 especially delicate, arid fitted for perception at long 

 range. Yet in all these respects they are surpassed 

 by birds. As a mere anatomical machine the bird 

 always seems to me superior to the mammal. It is not 

 easy to see why it failed, as it has, to reach the goal of 

 possibility of indefinite development and dominance in 

 the animal world. Why he stopped short of the higher 

 brain development I cannot tell. The fact remains 

 that the mammal is pre-eminent in brain power, and 

 that this gave him the supremacy. 



But mammals came very late to the throne, and the 

 probability of their ever gaining it must for ages have 

 appeared very doubtful. They seem to have been a 

 fairly old group with a very slow early development. 

 Beptiles especially, and even birds, were far more pre- 

 cocious than these slower and weaker forms which 

 crept along the earth. But reptiles and birds, like 

 many other precocious children, soon reached the 

 limit of their development. They had muscle, the 

 mammal brain and nerve ; the mammal had the stay- 

 ing power and the future. Bitter and discouraging 

 must have been the struggle of these feeble early mam- 

 mals with their larger, swifter, and more powerful, 

 reptilian relatives. And yet, perhaps, by this very 

 struggle the mammal was trained to shrewdness and 

 endurance. 



The primitive mammals laid eggs like reptiles or 

 birds. Only two genera, echidna and platypus, sur- 



