1 62 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



germs, come into life, and propagate themselves. By far 

 the greater number of germs perish in the earliest stage of 

 life, and it is only some favoured organisms which manage to 

 develop, and actually survive the first period of early youth, 

 and finally succeed in propagating themselves. This import- 

 ant fact is easily proved by a comparison of the number of 

 eggs in a given species with the number of individuals which 

 exist of this species. These numerical relations show the 

 most striking contrast. There are, for example, species of 

 fowls which lay great numbers of eggs, and yet are among 

 the rarest of birds ; and the bird which is said to be the 

 commonest (the most widely spread) of all, the stormy petrel 

 {Procellaria glacialis), lays only a single egg. The relation 

 is the same in other animals. There are many very rare 

 invertebrate animals, which lay immense quantities of eggs ; 

 and others again which produce only very few eggs, and yet 

 are among the commonest of animals. Take, for example, 

 the proportion which is observed among the human tape- 

 worms. Each tape- worm produces within a short period 

 millions of eggs, while man, in whom these tape-worms are 

 lodged, forms a far smaller number of eggs, and yet for- 

 tunately there are fewer tape-worms than human beings. 

 In like manner, among plants there are many splendid 

 orchids, which produce thousands of seeds and yet are very 

 rare, and some kinds of asters (Compositse), which have but 

 few seeds, are exceedingly common. 



This important fact might be illustrated by an immense 

 number of examples. It is evidently, therefore, not the 

 number of actually existing germs which indicates the num- 

 ber of individuals which afterwards come into life and 

 maintain themselves in life ; but rather the case is this, 



