130 THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. 



And clearly, the ability of an organism to expend largely and 

 assimilate largely, so as to make a large surplus, presupposes 

 a large physiological capital, in the shape of organic matter 

 more or less complete in its structural arrangements. 



Throughout the vegetal kingdom, the illustrations of this 

 truth are not conspicuous and regular : the obvious reason 

 being, that since plants are accumulators and in so small a 

 degree expenders, the premises of the above argument are 

 but very partially fulfilled. The food of plants (excepting 

 Fungi and certain parasites) being in a great measure the 

 same for all, and bathing all so that it can be absorbed with 

 out effort, their vital processes result almost entirely in profit. 

 Once fairly rooted in a fit place, a plant may thus from the 

 outset add its entire returns to capital ; and may soon be able 

 to carry on its processes on a large scale, though it does not 

 at first do so. When, however, plants are expenders, namely, 

 during their germination and first stages of growth, their 

 degrees of growth are determined by their amounts of vital 

 capital. It is because the young tree commences life with a 

 ready-formed embryo and store of food sufficient to last for 

 some time, that it is enabled to strike root and lift its head 

 above the surrounding herbage. Throughout the 



animal kingdom, however, the necessity of this relation is 

 everywhere obvious. The small carnivore preying on small 

 herbivores, can increase in size only by small increments : its 

 organization unfitting it to digest larger creatures, even if it 

 ran kill them, it cannot profit by amounts of nutriment ex 

 ceeding a narrow limit; and its possible increments of growth 

 being small to set out with, and rapidly decreasing, must 

 come to an end before any considerable size is attained 

 Manifestly the young lion, born of tolerable bulk, suckled un 

 til much bigger, and fed until half- grown, is enabled by the 

 power and organization which he thus gets gratis, to catch 

 and kill animals of size enough to give him the large supply 

 of nutriment needed to meet his large expenditure, and yet 

 leave a large surplus for growth. Thus then is explained 



