THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE. 215 



night, dropped his watch." It gave him no concern ; he 

 was sure a bizcacha would find it for him in the morning, 

 as actually happened ! " The only fact which I know 

 analogous," says Mr. Darwin (p. 125), "is the habit of the 

 Australian Calodera maculata, which makes an elegant 

 vaulted passage of twigs for playing in, collecting near 

 the spot shells, bones, and the feathers of birds: the 

 natives, when they lose any hard object, search the playing 

 passages, and even a tobacco pipe has been known to be 

 thus recovered." Drawings of this bower-bird, there 

 called the Chlamydera maculata, " with bower," are to be 

 seen at p. 382 of the Descent of Man, where the details 

 of the description are at much greater length. Mr. 

 Darwin's remarks, partly seen already, in regard to 

 extinction (p. 175), may be put as a general conclusion 

 on this whole side of the subject : 



" We do not steadily bear in mind, how profoundly 

 ignorant we are of the conditions of existence of every 

 animal ; nor do w r e always remember that some check is 

 constantly preventing the too rapid increase of every 

 organised being left in a state of nature. The supply of 

 food, on an average, remains constant. We are unable to 

 tell the precise nature of the check. If, then, the too 

 rapid increase of every species, even the most favoured, 

 is steadily checked, as we must admit, though how and 

 when it is hard to say and if we see, though unable to 

 assign the precise reason, one species abundant and 

 another closely allied species rare in the same district 

 to admit all this, and yet to call in some extraordinary 

 agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to 

 exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that ' 

 sickness in the individual is the prelude to death 

 to feel no surprise at sickness but when the sick man 

 dies, to wonder, and to believe that he died through 

 violence." 



