68 BOMBAY DUCKS 
upon the scene, those animals to survive were by no 
means always the ideally fit, but those who were best 
able to adapt themselves to the nook or cranny in the 
world that Nature assigned to them. Man, however, 
has been more ruthless than even Nature in the destruc- 
tion of the nobler mammals. 
There is an ancient fable that tells of a staunch old 
oak and a feeble sapling which grew side by side in a 
forest. A mighty tempest came, the oak tree bravely 
held up its head and haughtily refused to bow down 
before the storm, so it was uprooted and died a noble 
death. The sapling, on the other hand, meekly bent 
before the stormy blast, acknowledging its supremacy ; 
so the gale passed over it leaving it unharmed. 
This fable explains the survival of the unfit. 
Before man was evolved the world may be compared 
to India in pre-British times. There were conquering 
species and conquered ones. No one race stood head 
and shoulders above all the rest. Now one species 
established a supremacy, now another, but the position 
was invariably a short-lived one, and, even while it 
lasted, was constantly in jeopardy. 
In those days, great pachyderms disputed with 
monster edentates and powerful carnivora the supre- 
macy of the earth; sometimes one prevailed for a little, 
sometimes another. Often these conquering species 
existed side by side, maintaining a kind of armed 
neutrality, half afraid of each other, and contemptuous 
of the great mass of the animals, allowing them to 
occupy those places in the earth which they themselves 
could not fill, Then suddenly one species prevailed. 
