652 
Our Animal Enemies 
[November, 
direction is of course determined by the wishes or the whims 
of the speaker. If you do not fall in with his ideas and 
projects you are liable to be denounced as one who wishes 
to arrest progress, “ already slow enough,” and you are, in 
somewhat stale figures, likened to the Mrs. Partington of 
modern mythology. Yet perhaps that particular “ progress” 
you seek to arrest may be but the rogue’s march to the 
gallows, the sick man’s approach to dissolution. 
Such are some of the considerations which suggest them- 
selves if we seek to apply the principles of Evolutionism — 
perhaps we had better say of “ Transformism,” inelegant as 
is the word — to a survey of the present position and future 
prospers of society and of societies. We would recom- 
mend social, moral, and political thinkers to familiarise 
themselves more thoroughly than they have hitherto done 
with these principles. Perhaps they may find occasion to 
reconsider certain of the dogmas in which they most 
delight. 
VI. OUR ANIMAL ENEMIES AND ALLIES 
RECONSIDERED. 
f CANTY as is the British fauna, our knowledge of its 
relation to human needs and conveniences is by no 
means complete. Almost every season we notice 
fresh features in the habits and character of some apparently 
well-known species which must be taken into account when 
the question of its preservation or destruction has to be 
raised. In such cases we cannot help asking whether our 
forefathers have merely omitted to record some old fact, or 
whether the species in question are developing new habits ? 
On this point no general law can be laid down. We know 
that changes of diet have been distinctly traced, as in the 
New Zealand parrot and the South African baboon, both of 
which have quite recently acquired a taste for mutton. In 
like manner, if we turn over the zoological literature of the 
past, we find the common squirrel invariably spoken of as 
perfectly harmless, living upon nuts and acorns. Yet if we 
