178 TERRITORY AND REPRODUCTION 



the more uniformly successful would the mating 

 of all the individuals in a given district tend 

 to become. But all of this renders an interval 

 of sexual inactivity unavoidable ; an interval 

 which must constitute a danger unless there 

 were something in the external environment 

 to prevent the male and female from drifting 

 apart. Inasmuch, then, as the occupation of 

 a territory serves to remove all possibility of 

 permanent separation, I suggest that its evolu- 

 tion has afforded the condition under which 

 this beneficial procedure has developed — free 

 to mate when they will, free to seek food 

 where they will, free to pursue their normal 

 routine of existence, and to meet all exigencies 

 as they arise in their ordinary daily life — 

 whilst free to do this, their future, as a pair, 

 is nevertheless secure. 



Thus far we have considered the territory 

 in its relation to the discharge of the sexual 

 function. In many of the lower forms of life, 

 the success or the failure of reproduction, so 

 far as the individual is concerned, may be said 

 to end with the completion of the sexual act — 

 the female has but to deposit her eggs in a 

 suitable environment and then her work is done, 

 because in due course and under normal condi- 

 tions of temperature the young hatch out, and 

 from the first are able to fend for themselves. 

 And so, when we come to consider the question 

 of reproduction in the higher forms of life, we 

 are apt to focus attention too much upon the 

 sexual function and too little upon the con- 



