lately rampant over the world. Is there any security against some other bacillus quite as ubiquitous, and ten times as fatal, coming to take its abode among us? It may be that the intelligence of man shall be able to cope with the deadly influences that are around him, and that thus the human race may be preserved from the annihilation that seems to await all unintelligent races of animals. The Pasteurs of the future may be able to devise means by which the ravages of the bacilli in the human body can be still further restrained, even if not wholly frustrated. The advent of intelligent beings on the globe has certainly introduced a factor into evolution the full import of which we are not at present able to appreciate.
Speaking broadly, we may assert that every species of animal gradually vanishes, or is transformed into what may be considered a creation of different character. There are, of course, a few apparent exceptions among organizations of a low type. But the instances of such identities are comparatively few, and they are not to be met with among animals of the higher type. Though some of the lower animals to which we have referred may be of more abiding duration than the higher forms, yet it by no means follows that any of the lower types are qualified for indefinitely long existence. It seems much more likely that, when sufficient time has elapsed, they will not be found exceptions to the law that the duration of every species is limited. The palaeontological evidence, so far as it goes, must therefore be held to suggest that the present human animal, like every other species, is necessarily doomed to disappear, unless in so far as the presence of intelligence may be able to avert the fate that seems to attend every species in which intelligence is absent.
