A BALLADE OF EVOLUTION.

IN the mud of the Cambrian main
Did our earliest ancestor dive:
From a shapeless albuminous grain
We mortals our being derive.
He could split himself up into five,
Or roll himself round like a ball;
For the fittest will always survive,
While the weakliest go to the wall.
As an active ascidian again

Fresh forms he began to contrive,
Till he grew to a fish with a brain,

And brought forth a mammal alive. With his rivals he next had to strive,

To woo him a mate and a thrall; So the handsomest managed to wive, While the ugliest went to the wall.

At length as an ape he was fain
The nuts of the forest to rive;
Till he took to the low-lying plain,
And proceeded his fellow to knive.
Thus did cannibal men first arrive,

One another to swallow and maul; And the strongest continued to thrive, While the weakliest went to the wall.

ENVOY.

Prince, in our civilised hive,

Now money's the measure of all ; And the wealthy in coaches can drive, While the needier go to the wall.

THE

EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE.

I.

MICROSCOPIC BRAINS.

SITTING on this little rounded boss of gneiss beside the path which cuts obliquely through the meadow, I am engaged in watching a brigade of ants out on foraging duty, and intent on securing for the nest three whole segments of a deceased earthworm. They look for all the world like those busy companies one sees in the Egyptian wall-paintings, dragging home a huge granite colossus by sheer force of bone and sinew. Every muscle in their tiny bodies is strained to the utmost as they prise themselves laboriously against