The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1904-04-10
BY PROF. WILLIAM BoELsCHE.

Copyright by T c. McClure)
i nour generation We behold gigantic
spectacle. Only a few on this dark and
restless earth grasp it in its full great
ness And in truth. one should be on
another planet in order TO see 1t as 1t U.s.
monstrous, yet sublime in its very terror.
Let us imagine a perspective.
Instead of humanity we see single
vast man And this man, a Hercules, Is
wrestling with a Hydra.
The Hydra of the old tales was an ami
NAL, 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
q thing that is not animal mot plant.
without inner structure. 1t is not gigan-
tie. like the stored Hydra. in the sense
of having a single huge animal-body. But
It is gigantic in another sense that goes
Tar beyond that old Hydra.
In the Hydra new head grew at once
In place of every one that was cut off.
The monster to which l refer tears apart
under the hands of the lighting man into
miIliards OF new horrors. Where one
threatened now. countless masses threat
en- in the next moment.
And in this expanding mass the crea-
lures spread over the earth and heaven
till new. more dreadful whole is formed
again of them, and drives like black,
killing fog, from all sides upon the Her
cuIes He strains. grasps-will he con-
quer?
No mythology has created anything like
that.
1t is man-humanity fighting the bacil-
lUs.
HIGHEST AND LOWE MEET.
\ most wonderful thing has. indeed. de-
veloped on our old planet The highest
and the lowest form of organic life nave
met at last in fight for existence.
The tight against the bacillus is a
naked. defensive battle OF the geological
species man" 1t is the last. decisive war
between the eliminating point of all life
development and the oldest. most primi-
tive. most simple existence that life has
produced. with which life began millions
Of years ago. and which life has dragged
upward with it rs an undiEested primor-
dial demnart. side by side with the
mighty development at whose pinnacle
stands Man.
The fun earth-mastery Of man. strict
Is speaking. did not begin before the nine
teenth century.
Man appeared on earth in an epoch in
which it already was possible to reckon
backward millions of years during which
the ver;ebratcs had become the superior
creatures OF the world.
These vertebrates mans nearest an
costors and relatives. man had 10 destroy
first They faced him in three groups
and in each group was 4 history Of Time
The smallest and leas; important group
remained as the vanishing rest OF ar
epoch in whose highest period man did
not exist. We call this the secondary
epoch now II was the day of the :chthyo-
saurins This strange world has 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 be
fore the coming OF man. lie did not meet
the ichyosaurians Only here and there
did he find a relic Of the epoch.
MANS SLAUGHTER BEGINS
Australia had preserved the most sin
gular survivors. The few Wild men Their,
hardly disturbed them; our advancing Eu
ropean culture Is doing ii radically TIL,
duck-hin Is disappearing. Soon they vii
have shot IT, last kangaroo-one Of III.
earliest and eldest Of mammal forms th-
great nzard-flsh Ceratodus. whose ances
tors formed the link between fsh and
lizzard in the Devouian period. vegeta
bies still in only two tiny riyulets: tn,
mysterious lizard Hatteria in New Zea
land. the one surviving arch-reptiIe which
mixed the reptiles with the amphibiant
and perhaps even with the mammals. lIat
become so rare. only one hundred year
after its discovery. that only the protec
ton Of the government and its isolate,
habitat on A few rock islands in Cool
Sound check its extinction temporarily.
on the same New Zealand the Maori
ate up a race Of immense wingless birds
The moas. For All this great world @
survivals man became the execuuone
in the beginning and remains So
OF quite different Importance 10 man il
his infancy was second group OF Iarg
vertebrates II North America. Europ
and North Asia there came d change a
Ahis time that altered or destroyed IL