Ry PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 439 
the increase in the number of organic beings in a 
geometrical ratio, while the means of existence 
cannot be made to increase in the same ratio, that 
there must come a time when the number of or- 
ganic beings will be in excess of the power of pro- 
duction of nutriment, and that thus some check 
must arise to the further increase of those organic 
beings. At the end of the ninth year we have seen 
that each plant would not be able to get its full 
square foot of ground, and at the end of another 
year it would have to share that space with fifty 
others the produce of the seeds which it would 
give off. 
What, then, takes place? Every plant grows 
up, flourishes, occupies its square foot of ground, 
and gives off its fifty seeds; but notice this, that 
out of this number only one can come to anything; 
there is thus, as it were, forty-nine chances to one 
against its growing up; it depends upon the most 
fortuitous circumstances whether any one of these 
fifty seeds shall grow up and flourish, or whether 
it shall die and perish. This is what Mr. Darwin 
has drawn attention to, and called the “STRUGGLE 
FOR EXISTENCE”; and I have taken this simple 
case of a plant because some people imagine that 
the phrase seems to imply a sort of fight. 
I have taken this plant and shown you that this 
is the result of the ratio of the increase, the neces- 
sary result of the arrival of a time coming for every 
species when exactly as many members must be 
