How far intelligence may be able to accomplish this is a point on which palaeontology gives no guidance whatever. Would the plesiosaurus, if he had been gifted with reasoning power, have been able to do such battle for his race that they would have survived those changes and chances which have certainly swept such creatures from existence P Without speculating on such a question, we may, nevertheless, believe that intelligence can sometimes confer on the species which possesses it a degree of pliancy in accommodating itself to altered conditions of the environment superior to that enjoyed by organisms without intellectual power. It may be noted that man has preserved at least one species of animal from the extinction which to all appearance would otherwise have overtaken it. The camel, as a wild animal, is said to be now extinct. Its nearest ally at present living in a state of nature must be sought in the New World. The camel itself and its immediate congeners have apparently been so extirpated as wild animals, that it is to the llamas and alpacas of Peru that we have to look for the nearest wild, animals to the ship of the desert, which has from time immemorial been domesticated in the East. It is at least conceivable that what man has been able to do for other races of animals he can also do on behalf of that race to which he himself belongs.
Suppose that the succession of summer and winter, of seedtime and harvest, were to last indefinitely; suppose that the sun were never to be less generous in the dispensing of his benefits than he is at present, it is quite possible that man's intelligence might be able to defeat various enemies which threaten the extinction of his species. It seems useless for us to discuss this question,
