None of these forms were of the same species as those now living, and many of them, as we see, had characters which we now find in two or three different animals; showing that they had not yet specialised the various weapons of attack and defence, and the difference of limbs and teeth which now distinguish their descendants. So that, for example, though there were fierce animals of prey, none had yet the formidable teeth of the tiger nor the muscular strength of the lion, neither had the vegetarians the fleetness of the horse, the horns of the deer, nor the large brain of the elephant. This had all to come with time, and from that day to this their descendants have been spreading over the earth. Some, large and powerful, have conquered by strength; some, by superior intelligence, have learned to herd together and protect each other in the battle of life; some have gone back to the water and imitated the fish in their ocean home; and others, smaller and feebler, have lived on by means of their insignificance, their rapid multiplication, and their power of hiding, and feeding on prey too minute to attract their more powerful neighbours. Among all these there are hundreds of different forms, branching out here and there, crossing each other’s path and often jostling on the way; while during the long period between our first knowledge of them and now, they have been driven or have travelled from one country to another, from the northern to the southern hemisphere, or from the Old to the New World, till in many cases it is impossible to say what routes they have taken. How, then, shall we get a glimpse of the nature of these large groups? Shall we take the moles and hedgehogs as the lowest, and the monkeys as the highest, and then travel in a straight line through the forms between? Scarcely, I think, for it is very doubtful whether the lemur and the dormouse may not be able to boast of ancestors as ancient as the moles, while the elephant and the dog are surely as intelligent and far nobler animals than the monkey. No! we must make up our minds at once that the different branches have grown side by side to much the same height, so that our genealogical tree, if it were possible to make one, would, like a real tree, be a mass of entangled twigs, some of which would, indeed, be less aspiring than others, yet on the whole we could scarcely say that one reached nearer to the sky than another. What perfection they have each obtained in their own line is quite another question, and one which we are able to trace out. * * * * *