THE WEB OF LIFE 267 



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- 

 master contributiag to the same effect — and that the 

 latter (the starlings), having put an end to the indigenous 

 insectivorous birds by consuming their food, had turned 

 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 

 numbers of the depredators, that the goats had destroyed 

 one-half of the original flora, and the rabbits the rest, 

 that the pigs devastated the potato-gardens and yam- 

 grounds.* 



The destruction of small bats seems to be entirely wanton 

 and foolish, for they help birds in thinning the hosts of 

 fecund insects. It has been recently stated by Dr. C. A. R. 

 Campbell, of San Antonio, Texas, that there is an apparent 

 relation between mosquitoes and bats, that the former 

 increase as the latter decrease. He suggests the estab- 

 lishment of shelters for the bats so that they may increase 

 and multiply. 



Linkages. — At every turn the naturalist finds proof that 

 Nature is a vast system of hnkages, and that it is quite 

 unscientific to think of any organism as trivial or detached. 

 The arc of its life may not enter the human field, but it is 

 sure to enter many others, and one or other of its inter- 

 sections may at any moment acquire significance for Man. 

 One would not be inclined at first sight to attach much 

 practical importance to the sea-gooseberries or Ctenophores, 

 pelagic animals of the greatest dehcacy and beauty. They 

 descend into quiet water when there is any sea on ; they 

 re-ascend when there has been a lasting calm. Their 



