toleration-repaired the temples-restored, where he could, the images to their shrines-allowed the people the full and free exercise of their religion. Nay, he even went further. Anxious to conciliate those under his rule, he accepted Merodach as the Babylonian equivalent of Ahura-Mazda, as he had (with better reason) accepted Jehovah as his Jewish equivalent, and declared himself "his worshipper." He did not even deny a certain quasi-divinity to Bel, Nebo, and the other secondary Babylonian gods; but, paralleling them with his own izeds and amshashpands, let them preserve their old position in the regards of the people, let their images rest undisturbed in their temples, and professed that he himself "daily addressed to them his prayers." How much of this was policy, how much conviction that under various forms all men everywhere were really worshipping the same Celestial Power, may, perhaps, be doubtful; but that iconoclasm was no principle of his general government is certain.

On the moral disposition of Cyrus-on his supposed justice, gentleness, kindness of heart, and simplicity-his writings throw but little light. They belong to him as a ruler, not as an individual. We may, perhaps,

ἦθος.

trace in them some slight deterioration of character, more especially in the matter of simplicity and absence of ostentation; but otherwise they scarcely reveal 0oç. Content, at first, in his Persian home, to call himself simply "king," he becomes after his conquests, first, "the powerful king," and then, finally, "the supreme king, the great king, the powerful king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Akkad, the king of the four races," accumulating title upon title, with all the pride and vanity of his predecessors in the lordship of Asia. In common with other Persian monarchs, he acknowledges himself to have derived his royal dignity from God (Ezra i. 2); but his inscriptions are, on the whole, less religious than those of his successors. A certain amount of tenderness is shown in the way in which he speaks of his son Cambyses, of whom he has no unworthy jealousy, and whom he terms "the offspring of his heart.” Something more of kindliness and good-will towards his subjects than commonly appears in the official utterances of Oriental monarchs may also be traced in more than one of his proclamations or edicts, which enable us in some degree to understand why it was that the Persians. characterized his rule as that of (6 a father."* Altogether, however, the evidence on this point furnished by his writings is negative rather than positive; and the moral character of Cyrus, as distinct from his policy and his religious views, must still be judged of rather from the statements of historians than from the literary remains which he has left behind him.

GEORGE RAWLINSON.

Herod. iii. 89.

THE RELATION OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS

TO TIME.

SIN

INCE man is an animal, it is obvious that a statement of the relations of animals and plants to time might be made to include the facts of human history, the spread of civilization, and the development of science. But for our present purpose, man must be considered almost exclusively as a mere animal, as a member of the highest order of the class mammalia.* As such, he shows, with every other animal and with every plant, two distinct relations to time. The first of these concerns the length of the life of the individual, and the second refers to the more or less prolonged period during which his species has existed on the surface of this planet.

It is now generally known that living creatures have such definite relations to time as well as to space. It is generally known, that is to say, not only that the animals and plants of various regions of the carth's surface-such as Europe, South America, and Australia-are different now; but also that if we could see the world as it has existed at various past epochs, we should then behold groups of animals and plants more or less different from those now living. In other words, it is generally known that a succession of different groups of animal and vegetable inhabitants have flourished on the earth's surface since the first fluid film condensed from the hot vapour of its primeval atmosphere. The more general facts as to the mode and order of this succession, and the nature of the evidences existing for it, are, however, not so universally known, and the main object of this essay is to endeavour to portray them shortly and simply.

Before entering upon this subject, however, a few words may be said as to the length of the life of the individual. As to a multitude of plants, their existence is but for a single summer. Such a period of

See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, Sept. 1879, pp. 18 and 43.

life, however, is a very prolonged one compared with a crowd of vegetable organisms, hundreds of generations of which would be required to equal the venerable antiquity of a mature annual. On the other hand, the age of our historic oaks is notorious, and our yews may live for a period equal to that of a thousand generations of annuals, and the baobab tree will live a thousand years.

As to animals, the teeming microscopic life of a drop of pond-water includes that of creatures which appear to live but for a few hours, while the proverbial ephemera, in its winged state, lives but one day, or even less.

On the other hand, a tortoise which died in the Bishop of Peterborough's garden in 1821 was more than two hundred and twenty years of age, and one belonging to Archbishop Laud died from neglect at the age of a hundred and twenty-eight years. As to fishes, the pike has been said to live for two hundred and sixty-seven years, and the carp for two hundred years.

It is highly probable that the gigantic salamander may live for a greatly prolonged period, and frogs and toads are probably long-lived animals, small as is their relative size. A toad has been kept for. thirty-six years without showing signs of age, and then died through an accident. Whales have been supposed to live from three hundred to four hundred years. The life of an elephant is said to extend beyond a hundred years, but of this there seems as yet to be no certain evidence. Birds, as creatures at once so active and warm-blooded (and thus compressing, as it were, much life into a small period), might be expected to be short-lived. Yet parrots have been known to live for upwards of a century, and pelicans, geese, and crows may exceed the period commonly allotted to man. But however commonly threescore years and ten may be the term of human life, man can certainly both live and retain his intellectual faculties more or less beyond a hundred years. Yet a horse is generally old at thirty, and is not known ever to have attained twice that age. The life of a sheep is of about fifteen years' duration, and that of a dog from fifteen to twenty, although allied animals are much longer-lived. Thus, the lion called "Pompey," which died in the Tower of London in 1760, had lived there for no less than seventy years.

Extremely varied, then, is the duration of the life of individual organisms. Not less varied are the relations to time of the lives of races and of different groups of animals and plants. Species, genera, families, orders, and classes* of animals and plants, differ extremely as to their period of duration, some of each of these groups appearing to have been but short-lived compared with other divisions of similar rank, as we shall shortly see.

The animals and plants which inhabit the world to-day have inhabited it for a period stretching back far beyond any human record. As to the value of these terms see CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for Sept. 1879, p. 14.

Never

The world's fauna and flora have remained the same for ages. theless, great changes have been effected here and there in the number and distribution of different organisms, while various species have been locally, and in some instances universally, extirpated.

Thus, wolves have disappeared from England since the time of Henry VIII., though in Scotland they existed till 1743, and in Ireland till 1766, if not even somewhat later.

But sixty years ago the great bustard wandered about the South Downs and on Salisbury Plain, and we all know how rare many beasts and birds have become which once were common in Great Britain.

In 1741, the illustrious naturalist, Steller, was wrecked on a small island off the coast of Kamskatka, since called Behring's Island. There he found in enormous numbers an unwieldy aquatic beast, the rhytina, which he took to be the manatee, which it closely resembled. Peaceful and harmless, browsing on sea-weed, with dull senses, but with strong feelings of attachment for their mates, these beasts seem long to have escaped discovery, in spite of the various exploring expeditions which visited Eastern Siberia after it came into the possession of Russia in the latter part of the seventeenth century. This escape was doubtless due to its very restricted range, for it seems not to have inhabited the mainland of Kamskatka, or America, or the Kurile Islands, or any other part except the remote and desolate spot where it was discovered, and where doubtless for ages it had held, in undisputed sovereignty, its "ancient solitary reign." Unfortunately for it, it was not only equally incapable of flight or of self-defence, but its unwieldy body proved to be excellent eating. The result was, that such was the havoc made by the crews of trading-vessels, that, in only twenty-seven years from the time of its first discovery, the last survivor was killed and the species entirely extirpated. Another example of rapid extirpation by sailors is that of the gigantic and defenceless ground-pigeon† of Mauritius (without powers of flight), which was called the dodo, and which, till lately, was only known by some old representations and a solitary head, two feet, and the more or less imperfect skulls. No specimen of the dodo has been known alive since 1681.

The great auk, also now extinct, survived till 1844, and some seventy skins, nine skeletons, a variety of bones, and sixty-five eggs of the bird are now carefully preserved in museums. But the most wholesale and regrettable destruction of lately-existing animals is that which the natives of New Zealand have effected. Previously to its human colonization, that island was inhabited by a number of gigantic birds of various (at the least four) species, of which group the little apteryx is the sole surviving, diminutive, and more or less

* Both belong to the order Sirenia. See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for Sept. 1879, p. 19. +Anatomically it was a pigeon, but in habits and appearance it was very unlike any pigeon of our day.

A head and foot at Oxford; a foot in the British Museum; a skull at Copenhagen; and part of a skull at Prague.

remotely-allied representative. We are indebted to the skill and patience of Professor Owen for ideal restoration of these wonderful avian giants, the tallest of which was eleven feet high.

When the Cape of Good Hope was first explored the common zebra was found in its vicinity. Further in the interior another kind was subsequently discovered and sent to our collections, where it was valued for its rarity. Now, the "common" zebra, much the more completely and beautifully striped, is the rare one, and threatens to become extinct, as does the majestic African elephant, if its reckless slaughter for the sake of its tusks is not soon suspended. The American bison, again, must eventually disappear from the earth's surface unless protected as its congener in Europe-the auroch-preserved by the Emperor of Russia.

The spread of agriculture and of botanical collectors, again, has caused many English wild-flowers to have become rare, and has even extirpated some; and such destruction, of course, affects any animals which for the whole or part of their existence depend upon the plants thus affected. Thus, it is that the drainage of the fens has proved so destructive to our swallow-tailed butterflies. In many a foreign station a native flora has been decimated or still more ravaged through carelessness, as notably in St. Helena, where a most interesting flora of peculiar plants has been allowed to be all but annihilated by browsings of goats and the nibblings of rabbits which were introduced there. Human agency has ravaged and desolated the face of Nature over wide regions, producing even climatic changes, by the reckless destruction of forests. It is this which renders desolate so much of Southern Europe, and man is justly punished for such culpable and selfish removal of moisture-absorbing vegetation by floods, which such absorbing action would otherwise have averted. Who that visits Malaga can but feel pained at the arid and desolate aspect of the picturesquely-shaped but naked mountains which surround it, when he reflects on the period when those mountains were clothed with ample chestnut forests? Those mountains then bounded a large river, navigable for many miles,* instead of what is now little more than a rivulet, save when sudden rains will change it, in four hours, into a torrent, overflowing its wide banks and largely submerging the city.

But human agency has not, of course, influenced the life of species by destruction only. Enormous increase and preponderance has been given to kinds favoured by man, and sometimes (as the rat and certain insects) to species which he has involuntarily disseminated. When South America was discovered by Europeans, no horse or ox existed there, and llamas were the only cattle. To-day, vast herds of oxen and of horses range over the sea-like expanse of the Pampas plains. In Australia, no sheep or rabbits naturally existed. Now, sheep exist in millions, and the destruction of the multitude of rabbits has become In the time of the Romans the river was navigable by galleys as far as Cartama.