THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 15 



assume that all the progeny of the hundred pairs 

 become food-seekers along with their parents, the result 

 would indeed be for them a famine-stricken existence, 

 but not until they had made an end of all their 

 natural prey. I do not think that it is possible to 

 escape from such a conclusion. However, let us 

 for the present ignore this conclusion, and adopt 

 your assumption that by reason of their possess- 

 ing inferior individual variations the 1900 doomed 

 tigers are unable to find food and therefore die of 

 starvation. In this case you will admit that I am 

 very moderate when I say that three out of every 

 four met with should be found in a starving condition. 

 But as yet no hunter of big game has encountered 

 a young tiger that was not in robust and lusty health. 

 Mr. Kipling, indeed, in his romance of Naulahka, has 

 described in his graphic way a tiger returning to his 

 lair in the morning, after an unsuccessful night's 

 hunting, coughing out his angry and hungry disgust 

 at his non-success. But while I admit the right of 

 the romaricist to romance, I do not allow his doing so to 

 affect my belief that no tiger ever had such an experi- 

 ence. No sportsman ever killed an emaciated tiger, 

 unless it had become mangy and lean from old age." 



Here my friend exclaimed : " You are bringing 

 matters to an impasse. Tell me, do you believe that 

 the normal population of 100 pairs of tigers produce 

 in their generation 2100 offspring ? " 

 " Yes," I replied, " there or thereabout." 

 " Do you believe," he asked again, " that in the great 



