THE CARP AND THE STICKLEBACK 



showing that, with her, differences of size have neither 

 importance nor weight. 



But this contrast is not the only one; it is even the 

 least. That which concerns capacity for spawning is 

 more considerable. A spawning carp produces, in the 

 spring, as many times 100,000 eggs, on an average, as it 

 weighs kilograms; a female weighing sixteen pounds 

 lays almost 800,000 eggs. This figure being propor- 

 tionate to its size, so much could not be expected from 

 the tiny stickleback. But the stickleback exaggerates 

 the possible diminution, its normal spawning is extra- 

 ordinarily limited. Usually the female produces only 

 two or three hundred eggs; it is one of the least pro- 

 ductive of all fishes. But there is a certain improvement 

 in the size of these eggs, which are a little larger than 

 those of the carp and have a diameter of from one and a 

 half to two millimetres. But this smallness of numbers, 

 not to speak of size, has no influence on vitality. The 

 balance of correlation between species which Nature 

 has established does not give the carp a predominance 

 in numbers ever the stickleback in proportion to the 

 eggs spawned. The wastage during the early period of 

 growth soon gives the stickleback an advantage which 

 it would otherwise lack, and the sticklebacks themselves 

 contribute to this by destroying the recently hatched 

 young carp around them. 



So, in practice, the differences become less noticeable 

 and the contrasts less marked. The differences do not 

 seem so striking or so persistent as they did at first, when 

 we consider creatures in space alone and such as they 

 appear at a given moment. Time has its part to play 

 in the manifestations of life. It assembles and co- 

 ordinates what forms and attitudes distinguish and 

 differentiate; it tempers divergences and reconciles the 

 irreconcilable. Its power gives real meaning to life 

 considered as a whole. 



The contrast between carp and stickleback in spawn- 

 ing is not limited to the number of eggs produced. It 

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