30 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



piers, enfeebled by age or other causes, are unable to 

 resist their settlement, and are therefore killed. Those 

 who cannot find a settlement in this way all perish. 

 In this manner eagles in their mountain haunts are, 

 always apart from the exterminating intervention of 

 man, preserved from age to age, neither diminished 

 nor increased in numbers." 



"But," exclaimed my friend, "don't you think 

 this method of elimination resembles the struggle for 

 existence as defined by Darwin, which you say Nature 

 repudiates ? " 



" No," I said ; " the young eagles are not cast into 

 a wretched lifelong struggle, but sent upon a quest 

 which, if not successful, has a quick ending. Their 

 success in finding deserted nests, or birds enfeebled 

 and decrepit from age, is not due to their possessing 

 certain individual traits or variations, but to what 

 we may call fortuitous happening. Moreover, if 

 they perish, they perish in a manner that carnivorous 

 birds cannot reasonably complain of ; for Nature, 

 which is never wantonly cruel, is never senti- 

 mentally squeamish. I have seen it put forward 

 that the combats that take place in the rutting 

 season between the males of gregarious species, 

 sometimes ending in the death of the defeated 

 rival, are means used by Nature for thinning 

 the ranks of the excessive reproduction. But as 

 superfluous males only are killed, and the fertilising 

 of the females is in no way interfered with, it is 

 evident that the instinct which prompts the males 



