est breeder of all known animals. It begins breeding when thirty years old and goes on breeding until ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till a hundred years old. If this be so, after about eight hundred years there would be 19,000,000 elephants alive, descended from the first pair." A few years more of the unchecked multiplication of the elephant and every foot of land on the earth would be covered by them. Yet the number of elephants does not increase. In general, the numbers of every species of animal in the state of Nature remain about stationary. Under the influence of man most of them slowly diminish. There are about as many squirrels in the forest one year as another, about as many butterflies in the field, about as many frogs in the pond. Wolves, bears, deer, wild ducks, singing birds, fishes, tend to grow fewer and fewer in inhabited regions, because the losses from the hand of man are added to the losses in the state of Nature. It has been shown that at the normal rate in increase of English sparrows, if none were to die save of old age, it would take but twenty years to give one sparrow to every square inch in the State of Indiana. Such an increase is actually impossible, for more than a hundred other species of similar birds are disputing the same territory with the power of increase at a similar rate. There can not be food and space for all. With such conditions a struggle is set up between sparrow and sparrow, between sparrow and other birds, and between sparrow and the conditions of life. Such a conflict is known as the struggle for existence. 248. The struggle for existence. The struggle for existence is threefold: (a) among individuals of one species, as sparrow and sparrow; (b) between individuals of different species, as sparrow with bluebird or robin; and (c) with the conditions of life, as the effort of the sparrow to keep warm in winter and to find water in summer. All three forms of this struggle are constantly operative and with every species. In some regions the one phase may be more destructive, in others another. Where the conditions of life are most easy, as in the tropics, the struggle of species with species, of individual with individual, is the most severe. No living being can escape from any of these three phases of the struggle for existence. For reasons which we shall see later, it is not well that any should escape, for "the sheltered life," the life withdrawn from the stress of effort, brings the tendency to degeneration. Because of the destruction resulting from the struggle for existence, more of every species are born than can possibly find space or food to mature. The majority fail to reach their full growth because, for one reason or another, they can not do so. All live who can. Each strives to feed itself, to save its own life, to protect its young. But with all their efforts only a portion of each species succeed. - 249. Selection by Nature. But the destruction in Nature is not indiscriminate. In the long run those least fitted to resist attack are the first to perish. It is the slowest animal which is soonest overtaken by those which feed upon it. It is the weakest which is crowded away from the feeding-place by its associates. It is the least adapted which is first destroyed by extremes of heat and cold. Just as a farmer improves his herd of cattle by destroying his weakest or roughest calves, reserving the strong and fit for parentage, so, on an inconceivably large scale, the forces of Nature are at work purifying, strengthening, and fitting to their surroundings the various species of animals. This process has been called natural selection, or the survival of the fittest. But by fittest in this sense we mean only best adapted to the surroundings, for this process, like others in Nature, has itself no necessarily moral element. The songbird becomes through this process more fit for the song-bird life, the hawk becomes more capable of killing and tear ing, and the woodpecker better fitted to extract grubs from the tree. In the struggle of species with species one may gain a little one year and another the next, the numbers of each species fluctuating a little with varying circumstances, but after a time, unless disturbed by the hand of man, a point will be reached when the loss will almost exactly balance the increase. This produces a condition of apparent equilibrium. The equilibrium is broken when any individual or group of individuals becomes capable of doing something more than hold its own in the struggle for existence. When the conditions of life become adverse to the existence of a species it has three alternatives, or, better, one of three things happens, namely, migration, adaptation, extinction. The migration of birds and some other animals is a systematic changing of environment when conditions are unfavorable to life. When the snow and ice come, the furseal forsakes the islands on which it breeds, and which are its real home, and spends the rest of the year in the open sea, returning at the close of winter. Some other animals migrate irregularly, removing from place to place as conditions become severe or undesirable. The Rocky Mountain locusts, which breed on the great plateaû along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes increase so rapidly in numbers that they can not find enough food in the scanty vegetation of this region. Then great hosts of them fly high into the air until they meet an air current moving toward the southeast. The locusts are borne by this current or wind hundreds of miles, until, when they come to the great grain-growing Mississippi Valley, they descend and feed to their hearts' content, and to the dismay of the Nebraska and Kansas farmer. These great forced migrations used to occur only too often, but none has taken place since 1878, and it is probable that none will ever occur again. With the settlement of the Rocky Mountain plateau by farmers, food is plenty at home. And the constant fight ing of the locusts by the farmers, by plowing up their eggs, and crushing and burning the young hoppers, keeps down their numbers. Another animal of interesting migratory habits is the lemming, a mouse-like animal nearly as large as a rat, which lives in the arctic regions. At intervals varying from five to twenty years the cultivated lands of Norway and Sweden, where the lemming is ordinarily unknown, are overrun by vast numbers of these little animals. They come as an army, steadily and slowly advancing, always in the same direction, and "regardless of all obstacles, swimming across streams and even lakes of several miles in breadth, and committing considerable devastation on their line of march by the quantity of food they consume. In their turn they are pursued and harassed by crowds of beasts and birds of prey, as bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, wild cats, stoats, weasels, eagles, hawks, and owls, and never spared by man; even the domestic animals not usually predaceous, as cattle, foals, and reindeer, are said to join in the destruction, stamping them to the ground with their feet and even eating their bodies. Numbers also die from disease apparently produced from overcrowding. None ever return by the course by which they came, and the onward march of the survivors never ceases until they reach the sea, into which they plunge, and swimming onward in the same direction as before perish in the waves." One of these great migrations lasts for from one to three years. But it always ends in the total destruction of the migrating army. But the migration may be of advantage to the lemmings which remain in the original breeding grounds, leaving them with enough food, so that, on the whole, the migration results in gain to the species. But most animals can not migrate to their betterment. In that case the only alternatives are adaptation or destruction. Some individuals by the possession of slight advantageous variations of structure are able to meet the new demands and survive, the rest die. The survivors produce young similarly advantageously different from the general type, and the adaptation increases with successive generations. 250. Adjustment to surroundings a result of natural selection. To such causes as these we must ascribe the nice adjustment of each species to its surroundings. If a species or a group of individuals can not adapt itself to its environment, it will be crowded out by others that can do so. 'The former will disappear entirely from the earth, or else will be limited to surroundings with which it comes into perfect adjustment. A partial adjustment must with time become a complete one, for the individuals not adapted will be exterminated in the struggle for life. In this regard very small variations may lead to great results. A side issue apparently of little consequence may determine the fate of a species. Any advantage, no matter how small, will turn the scale of life in favor of its possessor and his progeny. "Battle within battle," says a famous naturalist, "must be continually recurring, with varying success. Yet in the long run the forces are so nicely balanced that the face of Nature remains for a long time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would give the victory to one organic being over another." 251. Artificial selection.-It has been long known that the nature of a herd or race of animals can be materially altered by a conscious selection on the part of man of these individuals which are to become parents. To "weed out” a herd artificially is to improve its blood. To select for reproduction the swiftest horses, the best milk cows, the most intelligent dogs, is to raise the standard of the herd or race in each of these respects by the simple action of heredity. Artificial selection has been called the "magician's wand," by which the breeder can summon up whatever animal form he will. If the parentage is chosen to a definite end, the process of heredity will develop the form |