In bigness to surpass earth’s giant sons,
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Thronged numberless; like that pygmean race
Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees, while, overhead, the moon
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course.”
But though we cannot assign a cause for this general reduction of the reptile class, save simply the will of the all-wise Creator, the reason why it should have taken place seems easily assignable. It was a bold saying of the old philosophic heathen, that “God is the soul of brutes;” but writers on instinct in even our own times have said less warrantable things. God does seem to do for many of the inferior animals of the lower divisions, which, though devoid of brain and vertebral column, are yet skilful chemists and accomplished architects and mathematicians, what he enables man, through the exercise of the reasoning faculty, to do for himself; and the ancient philosopher meant no more. And in clearing away the giants of the reptile dynasty, when their kingdom had passed away, and then re-introducing the class as much shrunken in their proportions as restricted in their domains, the Creator seems to have been doing for the mammals what man, in the character of a “mighty hunter before the Lord,” does for himself. There is in nature very little of what can be called war. The cities of this country cannot be said to be in a state of war, though their cattle-markets are thronged every week with animals for slaughter and the butcher and fishmonger find their places of business thronged with customers. And such, in the main, is the condition of the animal world;—it consists of its two classes,—animals of prey, and the animals upon which they prey: its wars are simply those of the butcher and fisher, lightened by a dash of the enjoyments of the sportsman.