w. b. d Wight. 141 -(111) 



Yet a complete serial arrangement in a vertical line of 

 gradation cannot properly be made with these groups. 

 When, in modern zoological works a tabulated scheme 

 of gradation is exhibited, it is usually in a more or less 

 branching form, indicating mutual relations between the 

 various groups which forbid their being regarded as 

 standing absolutely and wholly above or below each other 

 in grade. 



It is evident that rank has little to do with the real 

 importance of animals to the world, whether they are re- 

 garded as benefactors or as nuisances. Noxious animals 

 are by no means the more noxious, the higher the rank. 

 In fact, our most unendurable tormentors appear to be in 

 the lower grades. The lion, the bear, the crocodile, all 

 of them powerful and malignant vertebrates, are not, 

 after all, the greater scourges of mankind. That much 

 lower articulate, the mosquito, is far more generally ex- 

 ecrated as being more universal in its mischief. The low 

 wheat-midge, the locust, the minute and base phylloxera, 

 the insignificant clothes moth, the carpet bug, and those 

 microscopic organisms at the very foot of created things 

 which we suspect of fatally poisoning our blood — these 

 are the great scourges which we dread ; they increase 

 with civilization ; they destroy national values yearly, 

 which represent millions of dollars. What can be worse 

 from an economic point of view than the mean, yet ter- 

 rible tsetse fly. a low insect which absolutely sweeps 

 away all domestic cattle from vast districts of South 

 Africa \ 



Nor does high rank necessarily confer the highest 

 power and indication to beneficial service. We human 

 beings have a relative among the brutes, of whom we are 

 not proud. He is called the monkey. His organism is 

 the highest in creation except that of man. Does his 

 power to do either good or evil bear any proportion to 

 this his exalted rank ( I do not know that he does much 

 evil. I am sure that he does a very insignificant amount 

 of good. For real practical utility, a hive of bees, or a 

 few bushes covered with the cochineal insect, both hum- 

 ble articulates, or a Crop of the lowly organized coral- 

 polyps, building up limestone for our architectural use. 

 any one of- these is worth Shylock's "wilderness of 

 monkeys." 



