292 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



mankind will then be found further south, but acquired knowledge 

 will not be lost ; the present fauna may be more than decimated, 

 but will not perish unsung. The despised monographer of to-day 

 will have produced the classic of the future, and men will turn 

 to such works as giving the history of the animal life of a long 

 ago. Vast improvement will doubtless be effected in the art and 

 durability of pictorial illustration, and the figures of animals and 

 plants which now exist will be reproduced and preserved as 

 precious relics of a vanished past. We have worked without 

 this material ; who can gauge the nature of the work posterity 

 will produce when possessed of the bricks now produced with 

 such dire travail ? For after all knowledge cannot be forced — it 

 is only slowly accumulated ; the flash of genius frequently 

 illuminates a stage of the road, but the path again darkens, 

 and we plod on. But the next glacial epoch will occur in an 

 historical period, and will explain the action of its predecessors. 



(To be continued.) 



