The Outline of Science, Volume 1

All through the millions of years during which animals have tenanted the earth and the waters under the earth, there has been a search for new kingdoms to conquer, for new corners in which to make a home. And this still goes on. It has been and[Pg 195] is one of the methods of evolution to fill every niche of opportunity. There is a spider that lives inside a pitcher-plant, catching some of the inquisitive insects which slip down the treacherous internal surface of the trap. There is another that makes its home in crevices among the rocks on the shore of the Mediterranean, or even in empty tubular shells, keeping the water out, more or less successfully, by spinning threads of silk across the entrance to its retreat. The beautiful brine-shrimp, Artemia salina, that used to occur in British salterns has found a home in the dense waters of the Great Salt Lake of Utah. Several kinds of earthworms have been found up trees, and there is a fish, Arges, that climbs on the stones of steep mountain torrents of the Andes. The intrepid explorers of the Scotia voyage found quite a number of Arctic terns spending our winter within the summer of the Antarctic Circle—which means girdling the globe from pole to pole; and every now and then there are incursions of rare birds, like Pallas's Sand-grouse, into Britain, just as if they were prospecting in search of a promised land. Twice or thrice the distinctively North American Killdeer Plover has been found in Britain, having somehow or other got across the Atlantic. We miss part of the meaning of evolution if we do not catch this note of insurgence and adventure, which some animal or other never ceases to sound, though many establish themselves in a security not easily disturbed, and though a small minority give up the struggle against the stream and are content to acquiesce, as parasites or rottenness eaters, in a drifting life of ease. More important than very peculiar cases is the broad fact that over and over again in different groups of animals there have been attempts to master different kinds of haunts—such as the underground world, the trees, the freshwaters, and the air. There are burrowing amphibians, burrowing reptiles, burrowing birds, and burrowing mammals; there are tree-toads, tree-snakes, tree-lizards, tree-kangaroos, tree-sloths, tree-shrews, tree-mice, tree-porcupines, and so on; enough of a list to show, without[Pg 196] mentioning birds, how many different kinds of animals have entered upon an arboreal apprenticeship—an apprenticeship often with far-reaching consequences. What the freeing of the hand from being an organ of terrestrial support has meant in the evolution of monkeys is a question that gives a spur to our imagination.