56 NO STRUGGLE NO SELECTION 



meal. The jackals are content to wait patiently until 

 the lion departs satiated, but the hyaenas are more 

 impatient, and it sometimes happens that one too 

 venturesome will try unobserved to snatch a portion 

 of the meat, and pays for its temerity with its life, 

 encountering a hasty blow from the paw of the 

 offended autocrat. 



But there occur other causes of destruction beyond 

 the ordinary wear and tear of feral life, such as 

 forest and prairie fires, which frequently in the dry 

 season destroy a multitude of various animals, and 

 extensive organised battues, where a vast circum- 

 ference is ringed with men, who press forward driving 

 all the wild creatures in that part of the country to 

 an enclosed space, where a great slaughter takes place. 

 When the forest or the prairie fires have spent 

 themselves, and when the beaters and shooters have 

 left the scenes of their havoc, there has taken place a 

 great reduction in the number of the animals in the 

 districts that, in the one case, have been invaded by 

 man, and, in the other, have been devastated by fire. 

 But here the great procreative power of the prolific 

 species exhibits its recuperative potency. The 

 individual runs in the haunts of the several species 

 affected by the agents of destruction have been 

 depleted. The surviving females have accordingly a 

 larger space in which to conceal their broods in their 

 familiar haunts, while the number of the males has 

 been reduced. The consequence is that proportionally 

 more broods are saved, and as these arrive at maturity 



