54 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



that Nature having adjusted its prolific species 

 numerically to the capacity of their several coursing- 

 grounds to maintain them comfortably, has thereby 

 arranged that a certain unvarying proportion of the 

 broods shall escape the ken of the male. 



Nature, acting through the instincts which she has 

 implanted in each species, brings about her various 

 adjustments, and among them the required proportion 

 of the broods saved to the broods destroyed. 



It may be said that what broods will be saved 

 and what will fall victims to the instinct of the male 

 must be the result of chance, and in the ordinary 

 speech of men this manner of speaking may be 

 allowed, though it proclaims the limitations of the 

 human mind. Can it, however, be doubted that the 

 intelligence which works out an invariable general 

 result arranges the particulars to produce it? Is it, 

 I ask, unreasonable to regard it as a certain truth 

 that in a matter so vitally important as the preserva- 

 tion of her feral offspring in their due numbers, 

 Nature has adjusted to the finest issues the operation 

 of the instinct of the males of prolific species, so that 

 in their several runs the proportion of the broods that 

 fall to be saved is, relative to those that fall to be 

 destroyed, a fixed and determinate quantity, constant 

 and unvarying ? The amount of elimination by the 

 males will obviously be regulated by the opportunities 

 afforded for the concealment of the female by the 

 range in which the several pairs are accustomed to 

 roam ; while again the extent of the range will be 



