The Savannah morning news., 1903-06-21

lime in its very terror.
Let us imagine a perspective.
Instead of humanity we see a single
vast man. And this man, a Hercules,
is wrestling with a Hydra
The Hydra of the old tales was an
animal, patterned after the octopus,
the polyp or the cutie fish-an animal
that has been placed in the first rank
of the mollusks by modern science
therefore an animal of relatively high
development.
But this man that we see battles
with a thing that is not animal, not
plant. It is merely alive. 1t is with
out organs, without inner structure.
IT is not gigantic, like the storid Hy-
dra, in the sense of having a single
huge animal-body. But it is. gigantic
in another sense that goes far beyond
that old Hydra.
In the Hydra a new head grew at
once in place of every one that was
cut off. The monster to which / refer
tears spart under the hands of the
fighting man into mlliards of new
horrors. Where once threatened now,
countless masses threaten in the next
moment.
And in this expanding mass the
creatures spread over the earth and
whole is formed again of them. and
driven like a black, killing fog, from
all sides upon the Hercules. He
strains. gasps-will he conquer?
No mythology has created anything
like that
1t is man-humanity fighting the
bacillus.
A most wonderful thing has, indeed,
developed on our old planet. The
oh hn
ganic life have met at last in a fight
for existence.
The fight against the bacillus is a
naked, defensive battle of the zoologi-
cal species ''man." 1t is the last, de-
cisive war between the eliminating
point of all life-development and the
oldest, most primitive, most simple
existence that life has produced, with
which life began millions of years ago,
and which life has dragged upward
with it as an undigested primordial
remnant, side by side with the mighty
development at whose pinnacle stands
Man.
The full earth-mastery of man,
strictly speaking did not begin before
the nineteenth century.
Man appeared on earth in an epoch
in which it already was possible to
reckon backward millions of years
come the superior creatures of the
world.
These Vertebrates, mans nearest an
cestors and relatives man had to de-
Stroy first. They faced him in three
groups. and in each group was a his
tory of Time.
The smallest and least important
group remained as the vanishing rest
Of an epoch in whose highest period
n 81 hxy4e -
secondary epoch now 1t was the day
of the ichthyosaurians. This strange
world had lasted through interminable
spaces of time. Then it broke down.
Probably the slowly strengthening
world of mammals helped to force it
under. 1t happened long before the
coming of man. He did not meet the
ichthyosaurians Only here and there
did he find relic of the epoch
Mans Slaughter Begins.
Australia had preserved the most
singular survivors. The few wild men
there hardly disturbed them; our ad-
vanctng European culture is doing it
radically. The duck-bill is disappear
ing. Soon they will have shot the last
rkangaroo-one of the earliest and old
est of mammal forms; the great lizard
fish Ceratodus, whose ancestors formed
e. the link between fish and lizard in the
DeYonian period, vegetables still in only
, two tiny rivulets the mysterious lizard
Hatteria in New Zealand, the one sur
viving .arch-reptile. which linked the
i reptiles with the amphibfans and per-
haps even with the mammals, has be-
come so rare, only 100 years after its
discovery. that only the protection of
the government and it's isolated habitat
on few rock islands in Cook Sound
check its extinction temporarily.
ate up race of immense wingless
birds, the moas For all this great
world of surVivals, man became the ex-
ecutioner in the beginning and remains
so.
OF quite different Importance to man
In his infancy was a second group of
large vertebrates. In North America.
Europe and North Asia there came
change at this time that altered or
destroyed the animals of tertiary time
as the ichthyosaurians. marsupials and
billed mammals of secondary time had
been swept away.
However much man may have wit
messed of this change, it certainly oc-
Cured without his help When he had
become strong, the entire, stin mon
strously large remnant of the tertiary
world dwelled in South Asia and in
Africa. A small distant remnam also
lived in South America-grotesqu
mammoth Sioths and mammoth arma-
dillos. The latter evidently became ex-
tinct early, and as we have evidence
that man ate megatherium and glypto-
don in prehistoric days. it is likely that
he was the hangman of this animal
world also.
The Battle Against the Tertiary
World.
In other places the battle was not
so easy. For 2 900 wears and more the
African and Indian tertiary animal
world with its elephants rhinocerii,
hippopotamii, huge carnivora and man
like monkeys such as gorilla and orang
confronted even civilized humanity like
a demoniac spectre. surrounded with
fables. the image of the wild world"
that ruled lands and threatened hui
manity.
But as early as Crathage man learn
ed TO subdue the beast The Cartha-
gian euslaved the elephant and made
War-material OF him. The iron Roman
dragged the jungle brutes into his
arenas In armies And when the mus
ket was invented the final hour struck
for this bit Of primeyal and ancestral
hfe. The tertiary world Of giants
went tumbling headlOng after the Sec
ondary world and culture" became the
executioner % a historical decree.
But man had 10 do with another
group of animals. The great force
MAT drove the tertiary mammals out
of the north continents. before man
became strong was the lee. A certair
percentage o. mammals not thus driy-
~ south consisted 81 some that had
adjusted themselves a. fha cold so