The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 2

fossils tell us, by curious mammals that are for the most part long extinct. Here and there a relic of that forest age still survives. The tapir, for example, is an anachronism. At one time it had a wide and extensive distribution, but now it lingers on insecurely and prowls by night in one or two marshy patches of jungle, in South and Central America, in Malaya, and Java and Sumatra. And the okapi, lurking in the deepest recesses of the forests of the Belgian Congo, evaded scientific description until 1899. It may be that ‘other forest-dwelling mammals lurk on in the same way. But these creatures we may note are not very striking departures from those that are more widely distributed ; The tapir is a distant poor relation of the rhinoceros and the okapi is a closer poor relation of the giraffe. Even here, unless some novel ape or monkey amazes the world, there is little chance of a really striking departure from the forms of life we know. In passing, we may set aside as quite untenable the very wild rumours of gigantic survivors from the reptile age that invade the Press from time to time. The reptile age was very much more ancient than the forest mammal age to which we have just referred, its climatic condition may have been very different from any now on earth, and it is so improbable as to be inconceivable that any of the dinosaurs, for example,

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THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER 7

should have lingered on unseen to the present day.

To sum up, then, it is probable that the range and variety of life as it exists to-day is already pretty well charted. There are certainly many details to fill in, many unrecorded members of existing phyla, but it is in the highest degree improbable that we shall find any fundamental departure from the plans of organization that we already know.

Perhaps an unromantic conclusion. One likes to dream of strange, evasive creatures that are still at liberty, that have eluded the cold, systematic docketing of science. But there is wonder enough in what we already know. In our brief review we have noted something of the variety of life, of the astonishing diversity of its forms.

Compare, for example, the life of Mr. Everyman and his wife with the life of an amoeba, a life where an individual tears himself without residue or wastage into two and in which two individuals blend permanently and without reserve to form one. Consider the reconstitution of a sieved and scattered polyp, or the alternation of forms in the lifestory of a liver-fluke. The world as we know it is surely strange enough to satisfy the most curious; the fabled sea-serpent and the fabled African brontosaur are banal imaginings compared with such mysteries as confront us already.