160 THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. 



truth are not conspicuous and regular: the obvious reason 

 being that since plants are accumulators and in so small a 

 degree expenders, the premises of the above argument are 

 but very partially fulfilled. The food of plants (excepting 

 Fungi and certain parasites) being in great measure the 

 same for all, and bathing all so that it can be absorbed with- 

 out effort, their vital processes result almost entirely in profit. 

 Once fairly rooted in a fit place, a plant may thus from the 

 outset add a very large proportion of its entire returns to 

 capital; and may soon be able to carry on its processes on a 

 large scale, though it does not at first do so. When, however, 

 plants are expenders, namely, during their germination and 

 first stages of growth, their degrees of growth ar determined 

 by their amounts of vital capital. It is because the young 

 tree commences life with a ready-formed embryo and store 

 of food sufficient to last for some time, that it is enabled 

 to strike root and lift its head above the surrounding 

 herbage. Throughout the animal kingdom, however, 



the necessity of this relation is everywhere obvious. The 

 small carnivore preying on small herbivores, can increase in 

 size only by small increments : its organization unfitting it to 

 digest larger creatures, even if it can kill them, it cannot 

 profit by amounts of nutriment exceeding a narrow limit; 

 and its possible increments of growth being small to set out 

 with, and rapidly decreasing, must come to an end before 

 any considerable size is attained. Manifestly the young lion, 

 born of tolerable bulk, suckled until much bigger, and fed 

 until half-grown, is enabled by the power and organization 

 which he thus gets gratis, to catch and kill animals big 

 enough to give him the supply of nutriment needed to meet 

 his large expenditure and yet leave a large surplus for 

 growth. Thus, then, is explained the above-named contrast 

 between the ox and the sheep. A calf and a lamb com- 

 mence their physiological transactions on widely different 

 scales; their first increments of growth are similarly con- 



