THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 9 



elephant and the hippopotamus, paying to them a 

 sufficient tribute of their infant offspring to keep 

 down their numbers and prevent their undue 

 increase. 



It is sufficiently well established that in their native 

 haunts the carnivora do not, as a rule, make war upon 

 each other, and that they prefer as food the more 

 succulent flesh of their natural herbivorous prey ; and 

 as that is always in sufficient plenty, there prevails 

 a certain comity and comradeship among the purely 

 carnivorous tenants of the desert and the jungle. 

 They are, moreover, careful of their skins, and prefer 

 to get their food with as little danger to themselves as 

 possible. The lion and leopard will not face, unless 

 he is caught at great disadvantage, either an adult 

 wild boar or a full-grown buffalo, but they will readily 

 carry off a straggling pigling or an infant buffalo. 

 When battles occur between individuals of the same 

 species, it is almost invariably when one has struck 

 down a quarry, and another coming up covets it. If 

 the new-comer is manifestly the stronger, the weaker 

 will abandon its kill to it ; but if the original killer 

 thinks that it can maintain its right to what it has 

 killed, a fierce battle will ensue, ending, it may be, in 

 the death of one of the combatants. But such battles 

 are necessarily very infrequent. 



That there is a prevailing comity and not a mutual 

 antipathy between the strong denizens of Nature's 

 haunts is, I think, conclusively proved by the experi- 

 ments of Mr. Hagenbach, the well-known proprietor 



