THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE 53 



Terai, the Sunderbunds, the vast woods and swamps 

 through which roll the mighty Amazon and its 

 tributaries, in short, any fully stocked feral habitat. 

 Such an habitat is one in which, by the wonderful 

 and inexplicable working of Nature, all the various 

 forms of life, vegetable and animal, have found their 

 place, their convenient numbers, and their relative 

 adjustments. I have already remarked how difficult 

 it must be for the female to escape to a place of 

 concealment to bring forth her young untracked by 

 the male. The individual pairs of each species have 

 their own territory, out of which they seem to seldom 

 travel, just as if they were kept within their own 

 bounds by some physical constraint. Take the tiger. 

 It is a solitary animal which with its mate has a 

 certain area over which it roams for its prey. 

 Its roaming-ground will be more or less extensive 

 according to the plenty or scarcity of its prey. 

 Where their natural prey are plentiful, tigers will be 

 said to abound ; where, on the other hand, their 

 natural prey are not plentiful, there will be few 

 tigers. Now, in a district stocked from immemorial 

 time, the number of tigers, as indeed of all the car- 

 nivora inhabiting it, will be just as large as can be 

 comfortably maintained and supplied with their 

 proper food. I think I may safely say that this is a 

 matter attested by observation, and confirmed by the 

 fact that carnivorous animals continue practically 

 at the same point of numbers from generation to 

 generation. We may posit as a general principle 



