harmless animal; yet he devours whole shoals of herrings at a time, and, as he swims leisurely along, engulphs vast quantities of these and other fish in his capacious maw. And, as above shown, he performs a service in so doing, as well as nourishes himself. Nor otherwise, indeed, could he and many other species of fish exist; for there is not in the sea a sufficient quantity of vegetable matter for all or any large proportion of the fish that inhabit it.
On land, however, there is not the same necessity for animals being carnivorous; both because there is in general a sufficiency of vegetable food, and also because land animals do not multiply in any such degree as fishes do. Consequently, we find that most, if not all, the fossil land animals were not carnivorous, but herbivorous, feeding upon roots, herbs, and leaves of trees. This was the case with the enormous deinotherium, megatherium, mastodon, and similar gigantic animals that existed in the ages before man. These, like the elephant now, were, without question, herbivorous,—gentle and harmless creatures, that quietly fed on the productions of the earth, and roamed the solitary wilds, enjoying existence, but doing no harm to each other or to their neighbors. There is no satisfactory proof, we conceive, of the existence, before man, of what are properly called noxious animals; namely, such as are destructive to man and to his property, such as are manifestly of fierce, cruel, malicious dispositions, as wolves, tigers, panthers, hyænas, and the like: or of destructive and filthy insects and vermin, such as rats, mice, locusts, scorpions, and others of a similar nature. Remains of any such, we believe, have not been found in the rocks of any eras, which
