49S 
BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
conning on the stage of existence by some process of development 
or expansion, it is not difficult to speculate upon the possibility, 
even the probability, of existing forms disappearing as, of 
course, some forms do disappear through various causes. There 
are both animal and vegetable growths, once abundant, which 
exist no longer except as fossils or in some state of preservation 
in the earth’s crust, and there are abundant evidences of the 
previous existence upon earth of a life of which we cannot now 
have adequate conception. It is easy to assume (that these died 
out because of changed conditions of temperature or other clim- 
atic causes in the regions in which they flourished, through ex- 
haustion of the soil, or in some similar and not unnatural way 
which no longer flitted them for their environment. 
There was a time when the investigations which are carried 
on by such organizations, as ours, when men who carried them 
on, were regarded with grave suspicion by those who believed 
that the knowledge thus acquired might prove dangerous or was 
useless of itself; and when some discovery was made which con- 
flicted with generally accepted facts, fears were excited in timid 
minds that the whole fabric of society might be destroyed. That 
fear may be said to no longer exist generally, even though there be 
some who yet look with suspicion on the work of the scientific 
investigator into the doings and the order of nature. These in- 
vestigations have greatly enlarged the sum of human knowledge 
and increased the sum of human happiness. Reading lately an 
essay of Mr. W. Hamilton Mabie, I came across a paragraph in 
which that writer observes that it is difficult now to realize how 
completely nature was lost to men during the middle ages, how 
comparatively untouched human life was by association with the 
countless aspects of sea and sky. For several centuries the great 
mass of men and women were so estranged from nature (that they 
forgot their kinship. Of course, in every generation there were 
men and women to whom the beauty of the world did not appeal 
in vain, but their perceptions were limited by lack of the larger 
insight and larger vision. The popular ballads of these days were 
not lacking in pretty bits of description and sentiment, but nature 
is subordinate ; the sublime background, against which all mod- 
ern life is set, is invisible Mr. Mabie observes that it is difficult 
