Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/249

 Rh still," and to the sympathies: "Sleep." The circumstances of life will then protect the existence of certain adaptable qualities. On the stage of nature around man, there is passing a never-ending pageantry of victim and victor. The strong trample the weak down; the hidden survive in their shadows. The late brood, insufficiently trained by the mother when she has to leave it to shift for herself in autumn, is preyed upon; the earlier brood, carefully nurtured and taught well in the school of the woodlands, survives to teach its own offspring how to preserve life. The foolish gaudy thing sparkling in the sunshine amongst the leaves is pounced upon, and nature knows it no more; the still sober thing which looks like a leaf, or a twig, or a speckled shadow eludes the eye of its hungry pursuer and lives. Forms change as nature herself changes. Cultivation drove the grey wolf and the wild ox from Great Britain, the use of firearms is exterminating the giraffe, the introduction of the pig to the Mauritius put an end to the dodo, a change in Atlantic currents nearly destroyed the tile fish of the North American coast, alterations of climate have driven whole families of animals—like the tapir—away from old haunts and homes, the development of true bird-like habits introducing the flying reptiles into new conditions doomed those which retained their jaws of teeth and failed to produce horn-cased bills and beaks, the joining of North to South America in comparatively recent times led to the wiping out of certain South American