n and in popular estimation. No one
championed Evolutionism with more courage and skill.]

[Illustration: BARON CUVIER, 1769-1832

One of the founders of modern Comparative Anatomy. A man of gigantic
intellect, who came to Paris as a youth from the provinces, and became
the director of the higher education of France and a peer of the Empire.
He was opposed to Evolutionist ideas, but he had anatomical genius.]

[Illustration: AN ILLUSTRATION SHOWING VARIOUS METHODS OF FLYING AND
SWOOPING

Gull, with a feather-wing, a true flier. Fox-bat, with a skin-wing, a
true flier. Flying Squirrel, with a parachute of skin, able to swoop
from tree to tree, but not to fly. Flying Fish, with pectoral fins used
as volplanes in a great leap due to the tail. To some extent able to
sail in albatros fashion.]

Finally, it is worth dwelling on the risks of terrestrial life, because
they enable us better to understand why so many land animals have become
burrowers and others climbers of trees, why some have returned to the
water and others have taken to the air. It may be asked, perhaps, why
the land should have been colonised at all when the risks and
difficulties are so great. The answer must be that necessity and
curiosity are the mother and father of invention. Animals left the water
because the pools dried up, or because they were overcrowded, or because
of inveterate enemies, but also because of that curiosity and spirit of
adventure which, from first to last, has been one of the spurs of
progress.

Conquering the Air

6. The last great haunt of life is the air, a mastery of which must be
placed to the credit of insects, Pterodactyls, birds, and bats. These
have been the successes, but it should be noted that there have been
many brilliant failures, which have not attained to much more than
parachuting. These include the Flying Fishes, which take leaps from the
water and are carried for many yards and to considerable heights,
holding their enlarged pectoral fins taut or with little more than a
slight fluttering. There is a so-called Flying Frog (_Rhacophorus_) that
skims from branch to branch, and the much more effective Flying Dragon
(_Draco volans_) of the Far East, which has been mentioned already.
Among mammals there are Flying Phalangers, Flying Lemurs, and more
besides, all attaining to great skill as parachutists, and illustrating
the endeavour to master the air which man has realised in a way of his
own.

The power