THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 207 



in the question ? What is the testimony of every ship- 

 man who has ever landed on a previously unknown 

 shore ? " Their tameriess is shocking to me ! " That in 

 effect is the exclamation of every one of them in regard 

 to the animals they see. Mr. Darwin himself, in his 

 Journal, p. 400, quotes reports on the part of the earlier 

 visitors to such islands as the Falklands, Bourbon, Tristan 

 d'Acunha, where what creatures they find are always 

 " so tame as to suffer themselves to be caught." x It is 

 impossible to think of struggle and strife in such circum- 

 stances. Nay, the same tameness prevails in such places 

 even when there are " rapacious animals " present, such 

 as " foxes, hawks, and owls," and when battle to some 

 extent must be : battle but not possibly, as is plain at a 

 glance, butchery. Nor is this state of the case confined to 

 islands. Dr. Andrew Smith is quoted (p. 86) to have seen 

 in one day's South African march rhinoceroses, giraffes, 

 hippopotamuses, crocodiles, antelopes, lions, panthers, 

 hyaenas. Giraffes and antelopes could not very well 

 defend themselves from the attacks of these latter carni- 

 vora, nevertheless there were " several herds " of them. 

 Mr. F. C. Selous, " the celebrated African hunter," accord- 

 ing to the Scotsm.au (December 19, 1892) gives' similar 

 testimony : he " said it (the Fly District) was one enormous 

 game preserve, swarming with buffalo, burchell zebras, and 

 many species of antelope ; lions were also very plentiful." 

 Plentiful lion was not incompatible with still more plenti- 

 ful antelope. For that is remarkable, the different sides 

 on which the more plentiful and the less plentiful fall 

 How many the tame compared with the wild how few 

 the fierce compared with the gentle, the carnivorous with 

 the herbivorous ! Will the struggle for life explain that ? 

 If the fierce destroy the gentle, the carnivora the herbi- 



1 Dr. Erasmus gives us the same testimony from Professor Gmelin 



and M. Bougainville (Zo. i. 158). 



