The enlargement of stellar
space, demonstrating with stunning force the insignificance of the
earth, has been negative in its effect; but the quickening of travel
and intercourse, by making the earth's parts accessible and knitting
them together, has been positive.
The advantage of the animal over the vegetable kingdom is obvious.
The cabbage, should its environment tend to become worse, must live
it out, or die; the rabbit may move on in quest of a better. But,
after all, the swift-footed creatures are circumscribed in their
wanderings. The first large river almost inevitably bars their way,
and certainly the first salt sea becomes an impassable obstacle.
Better locomotion may be classed as one of the prime aims of the old
natural selection; for in that primordial day the race was to the
swift as surely as the battle to the strong. But man, already pre-
eminent in the common domain because of other faculties, was not
content with the one form of locomotion afforded by his lower limbs.
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