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the parents is killed; while they offer a defenceless prey to jackdaws, jays, and magpies, and not a few are ejected from their nests by their foster-brothers the cuckoos. As soon as they are fledged and begin to leave the nest great numbers are destroyed by buzzards, sparrow-hawks, and shrikes. Of those which migrate in autumn a considerable proportion are probably lost at sea or otherwise destroyed before they reach a place of safety; while those which remain with us are greatly thinned by cold and starvation during severe winters. Exactly the same thing goes on with every species of wild animal and plant from the lowest to the highest. All breed at such a rate, that in a few years the progeny of any one species would, if allowed to increase unchecked, alone monopolise the land; but all alike are kept within bounds by various destructive agencies, so that, though the numbers of each may fluctuate, they can never permanently increase except at the expense of some others, which must proportionately decrease.

Cases showing the Great Powers of Increase of Animals.

As the facts now stated are the very foundation of the theory we are considering, and the enormous increase and perpetual destruction continually going on require to be kept ever present in the mind, some direct evidence of actual cases of increase must be adduced. That even the larger animals, which breed comparatively slowly, increase enormously when placed under favourable conditions in new countries, is shown by the rapid spread of cattle and horses in America. Columbus, in his second voyage, left a few black cattle at St. Domingo, and these ran wild and increased so much that, twenty-seven years afterwards, herds of from 4000 to 8000 head were not uncommon. Cattle were afterwards taken from this island to Mexico and to other parts of America, and in 1587, sixty-five years after the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards exported 64,350 hides from that country and 35,444 from St. Domingo, an indication of the vast numbers of these animals which must then have existed there, since those captured and killed could have been only a small portion of the whole. In the pampas of Buenos Ayres there were, at the end of the last century, about twelve million cows and three million horses, besides great numbers in all other parts

of America where open pastures offered suitable conditions. Asses, about fifty years after their introduction, ran wild and multiplied so amazingly in Quito, that the Spanish traveller Ulloa describes them as being a nuisance. They grazed together in great herds, defending themselves with their mouths, and if a horse strayed among them they all fell upon him and did not cease biting and kicking till they left him dead. Hogs were turned out in St. Domingo by Columbus in 1493, and the Spaniards took them to other places where they settled, the result being, that in about half a century these animals were found in great numbers over a large part of America, from 25° north to 40° south latitude. More recently, in New Zealand, pigs have multiplied so greatly in a wild state as to be a serious nuisance and injury to agriculture. To give some idea of their numbers, it is stated that in the province of Nelson there were killed in twenty months 25,000 wild pigs.1 Now, in the case of all these animals, we know that in their native countries, and even in America at the present time, they do not increase at all in numbers; therefore the whole normal increase must be kept down, year by year, by natural or artificial means of destruction.

Rapid Increase and Wide Spread of Plants.

In the case of plants, the power of increase is even greater and its effects more distinctly visible. Hundreds of square miles of the plains of La Plata are now covered with two or three species of European thistle, often to the exclusion of almost every other plant; but in the native countries of these thistles they occupy, except in cultivated or waste ground, a very subordinate part in the vegetation. Some American plants, like the cotton-weed (Asclepias curassavica), have now become common weeds over a large portion of the tropics. White clover (Trifolium repens) spreads over all the temperate regions of the world, and in New Zealand is sometimes displacing native species, including even the native flax (Phormium

1 Still more remarkable is the increase of rabbits both in New Zealand and Australia. No less than seven millions of rabbit-skins have been exported from the former country in a single year, their value being £67,000. In both countries, sheep-runs have been greatly deteriorated in value by the abundance of rabbits, which destroy the herbage; and in some cases they have had to be abandoned altogether.

tenax), a large plant with iris-like leaves 5 or 6 feet high. Mr. W. L. Travers has paid much attention to the effects of introduced plants in New Zealand, and notes the following species as being especially remarkable. The common knotgrass (Polygonum aviculare) grows most luxuriantly, single plants covering a space 4 or 5 feet in diameter, and sending their roots 3 or 4 feet deep. A large sub-aquatic dock (Rumex obtusifolius) abounds in every river-bed, even far up among the mountains. The common sow-thistle (Sonchus oleraceus) grows all over the country up to an elevation of 6000 feet. The water-cress (Nasturtium officinale) grows with amazing vigour in many of the rivers, forming stems 12 feet long and inch in diameter, and completely choking them up. It cost £300 a year to keep the Avon at Christchurch free from it. The sorrel (Rumex acetosella) covers hundreds of acres with a sheet of red. It forms a dense mat, exterminating other plants, and preventing cultivation. It can, however, be itself exterminated by sowing the ground with red clover, which will also vanquish the Polygonum aviculare. The most noxious weed in New Zealand appears, however, to be the Hypocharis radicata, a coarse yellow-flowered composite not uncommon in our meadows and waste places. This has been introduced with grass seeds from England, and is very destructive. It is stated that excellent pasture was in three years destroyed by this weed, which absolutely displaced every other plant on the ground. It grows in every kind of soil, and is said even to drive out the white clover, which is usually so powerful in taking possession of the soil.

In Australia another composite plant, called there the Capeweed (Cryptostemma calendulaceum), did much damage, and was noticed by Baron Von Hugel in 1833 as "an unexterminable weed"; but, after forty years' occupation, it was found to give way to the dense herbage formed by lucerne and choice grasses.

In Ceylon we are told by Mr. Thwaites, in his Enumeration of Ceylon Plants, that a plant introduced into the island less than fifty years ago is helping to alter the character of the vegetation up to an elevation of 3000 feet. This is the Lantana mixta, a verbenaceous plant introduced

from the West Indies, which appears to have found in Ceylon a soil and climate exactly suited to it. It now covers thousands of acres with its dense masses of foliage, taking complete possession of land where cultivation has been neglected or abandoned, preventing the growth of any other plants, and even destroying small trees, the tops of which its subscandent stems are able to reach. The fruit of this plant is so acceptable to frugivorous birds of all kinds that, through their instrumentality, it is spreading rapidly, to the complete exclusion of the indigenous vegetation where it becomes established.

Great Fertility not essential to Rapid Increase.

The not uncommon circumstance of slow-breeding animals being very numerous, shows that it is usually the amount of destruction which an animal or plant is exposed to, not its rapid multiplication, that determines its numbers in any country. The passenger-pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is, or rather was, excessively abundant in a certain area in North America, and its enormous migrating flocks darkening the sky for hours have often been described; yet this bird lays only two eggs. The fulmar petrel exists in myriads at St. Kilda and other haunts of the species, yet it lays only one egg. On the other hand the great shrike, the tree-creeper, the nut-hatch, the nut-cracker, the hoopoe, and many other birds, lay from four to six or seven eggs, and yet are never abundant. So in plants, the abundance of a species bears little or no relation to its seed-producing power. Some of the grasses and sedges, the wild hyacinth, and many buttercups occur in immense profusion over extensive areas, although each plant produces comparatively few seeds; while several species of bell-flowers, gentians, pinks, and mulleins, and even some of the compositæ, which produce an abundance of minute seeds, many of which are easily scattered by the wind, are yet rare species that never spread beyond a very limited area.

The above-mentioned passenger-pigeon affords such an excellent example of an enormous bird-population kept up by a comparatively slow rate of increase, and in spite of its complete helplessness and the great destruction which it suffers from its numerous enemies, that the following account of one of its breeding-places and migrations by the celebrated

American naturalist, Alexander Wilson, will be read with interest:

"Not far from Shelbyville, in the State of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these breeding-places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a north and south direction, was several miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of 40 miles in extent. In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests wherever the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether with their young before the 25th of May. As soon as the young were fully grown and before they left the nests, numerous parties of the inhabitants from all parts of the adjacent country came with waggons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for several days at this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that the noise was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was difficult for one person to hear another without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons, which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening. Hawks, buzzards,

and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from the nests at pleasure; while, from 20 feet upwards to the top of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the axemen were at work cutting down those trees that seemed most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner, that in their descent they might bring down several others; by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced 200 squabs little inferior in size to the old birds, and almost one heap of fat. On some single trees upwards of a hundred nests were found, each containing one squab only; a circumstance in the history of the bird not generally known to naturalists.1 It was dangerous to walk

1 Later observers have proved that two eggs are laid and usually two young produced, but it may be that in most cases only one of these comes to maturity.

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