As an active ascidian again Fresh forms he began to contrive, Till he grew to a fish with a brain, And brought forth a mammal alive. With his rivals he next had to strive, To woo him a mate and a thrall; So the handsomest managed to wive, While the ugliest went to the wall. At length as an ape he was fain The nuts of the forest to rive; Till he took to the low-lying plain, And proceeded his fellow to knive. Thus did cannibal men first arrive, One another to swallow and maul; And the strongest continued to thrive, While the weakliest went to the wall. ENVOY. Prince, in our civilised hive, Now money's the measure of all; And the wealthy in coaches can drive, While the needier go to the wall. THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE. I. _MICROSCOPIC BRAINS._ Sitting on this little rounded boss of gneiss beside the path which cuts obliquely through the meadow, I am engaged in watching a brigade of ants out on foraging duty, and intent on securing for the nest three whole segments of a deceased earthworm. They look for all the world like those busy companies one sees in the Egyptian wall-paintings, dragging home a huge granite colossus by sheer force of bone and sinew. Every muscle in their tiny bodies is strained to the utmost as they prise themselves laboriously against the great boulders which strew the path, and which are known to our Brobdingnagian intelligence as grains of sand. Besides the workers themselves, a whole battalion of stragglers runs to and fro upon the broad line which leads to the head-quarters of the community. The province of these stragglers, who seem so busy doing nothing, probably consists in keeping communications open, and encouraging the sturdy pullers by occasional relays of fresh workmen. I often wish that I could for a while get inside those tiny brains, and see, or rather smell, the world as ants do. For there can be little doubt that to these brave little carnivores here the universe is chiefly known as a collective bundle of odours, simultaneous or consecutive. As our world is mainly a world of visible objects, theirs, I believe, is mainly a world of olfactible things.