The Extinction of Man - Page 2

terrestrial
denizens, some new competitor for space to live in and food to live
upon, that will sweep him and all his little contrivances out of
existence, as certainly and inevitably as he has swept away auk, bison,
and dodo during the last two hundred years.

For instance, there are the Crustacea. As a group the crabs and lobsters
are confined below the high-water mark. But experiments in air-breathing
are no doubt in progress in this group--we already have tropical
land-crabs--and as far as we know there is no reason why in the future
these creatures should not increase in size and terrestrial capacity. In
the past we have the evidence of the fossil _Paradoxides_ that creatures
of this kind may at least attain a length of six feet, and, considering
their intense pugnacity, a crab of such dimensions would be as
formidable a creature as one could well imagine. And their amphibious
capacity would give them an advantage against us such as at present is
only to be found in the case of the alligator or crocodile. If we
imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could
take refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what a
terrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And so far as
zoological science goes we must, at least, admit that such a creature is
an evolutionary possibility.

Then, again, the order of the Cephalopods, to which belong the
cuttle-fish and the octopus (sacred to Victor Hugo), may be, for all we
can say to the contrary, an order with a future. Their kindred, the
Gastropods, have, in the case of the snail and slug, learnt the trick of
air-breathing. And not improbably there are even now genera of this
order that have escaped the naturalist, or even well-known genera whose
possibilities in growth and dietary are still unknown. Suppose some day
a specimen of a new species is caught off the coast of Kent. It excites
remark at a Royal Society soirée, engenders a Science Note or so, "A
Huge Octopus!" and in the next year or so three or four other specimens
come to hand, and the thing becomes familiar. "Probably a new and larger
variety of _Octopus_ so-and-so, hitherto supposed to be tropical," says
Professor Gargoyle, and thinks he has disposed of it. Then conceive some
mysterious boating accidents and deaths while bathing. A large animal of
this kind coming into a region of frequent wrecks might so easily
acquire a preferential taste for human nutriment, just as the Colorado
beetle acquired a new taste for the common potato and gave up its old
food-plants some years ago. Then perhaps a school or pack or flock of
_Octopus gigas_ would be found busy picking the sailors off a stranded
ship, and then in the course of a few score years it