Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/297

Rh only so many points of a single stroke, that by its infinitely varied circumvolutions traces out to the astonished eyes of the cherubim the forms, proportions, and concatenations of all earthly beings. This single stroke delineates all worlds." Mr. Wesley says again: "All is metamorphosis in the physical world. Forms are continually changing. The quantity of matter alone is unvariable. The same substance passes successively into the three kingdoms. The same composition becomes by turns a mineral, plant, insect, reptile, fish, bird, quadruped, man." Further, Mr. Wesley spoke of the bat and flying squirrel as animals "proper for establishing the gradation that subsists between all the productions of Nature"; of the ostrich as seeming to be "another link which unites birds to quadrupeds"; and of the ape as a rough draught of man. He also considered the most primitive form of organic life as the connecting link between the animal and the vegetable to be the polypus. It did not occur to Mr. Wesley that man as the result of evolution had a debased origin, but he went on to say: "Has God created as many species of souls as of animals? Or is there only one species of soul in animals, differently modified according to the diversity of organization? This question is absolutely impenetrable by us. All we can say concerning it is this: If God, who has always acted by the most simple means, has thought proper to vary the spiritual perfection of animals merely by organization, his wisdom has so ordained it. At the summit of the scale of our globe is placed man, the masterpiece of earthly creation." Further: "Mankind have their gradations as well as the other productions of our globe. There is a prodigious number of continued links between the most perfect man and the ape."

Tropical Animals in Frost.—The animals in the London Zoölogical Gardens were surprised by a hard frost (16º) in the last days of November, 1893, but, according to an observer who was there to see, the animals from warm and tropical regions seemed no more inconvenienced by the cold than were their fellow-residents from far northern regions. With every pond and pool sheeted with ice, and the gravel walks as hard as granite, birds and beasts from such regions as Burmah, Assam, Malacca, and Brazil were abroad and enjoying the keen air; and others, which are usually invisible and curled up in their sleeping apartments until late in the day, were already abroad, sniffing at the frost and icicles, and as Mr. Sam Weller's polar bear 'ven he was a-practicing his skating.' A visit to the Gardens in such weather suggests a modification of too rigid ideas of the limitation of certain types of animals to warm or torrid climates, and illustrates the gradual and reluctant character of the retreat of species before the advance of the glacial cold in remote ages. No creatures are, as a rule, more sensitive to cold than the whole monkey tribe. Yet there is at least one species of monkey which habitually endures the rigors of a northern winter. One of the cleverest antique Chinese drawings at South Kensington represents a troop of monkeys caught in an avalanche of snow. The grotesque discomfiture of these pink-faced monkeys rolling down the hillside, helplessly clutching at each other's bodies and tails, grinning and grimacing as their heads emerge from the powdery snow, is something more than the fancy of a Chinese painter. The incident is probably drawn from an actual scene, and one of the creatures, the Scheli monkey from the mountains of Pekin, was in an open cage in the Gardens, and in far better health and spirits than in the height of summer. Its fur had grown thick and close, and the naked face had assumed the dark madderpink with which it was adorned in the Chinese drawing. When presented with sticks crusted with hard ice, it sucked the chilly damty with great relish, and only showed signs of sensitiveness to cold by putting its fingers to its mouth, then sitting on its hands to warm them. The behavior of this northern monkey is only strange by contrast with the general habits of its kind. But the indifference to cold of the capybara, a gigantic water guinea pig from the warm rivers of Brazil, is not easy to explain. Two of these quaint creatures had left their snug sleeping apartments, and were stepping gayly among pools of half-frozen water and broken ice. One had gained an extra coat by burrowing in its straw and then emerging with a pile upon its back; and when this fell off, retired and shuffled on another pile; but the