454 KINSHIP AND ADAPTATION 



down thousands of seeds. But after hunting seedlings 

 ■within and around this grove for man.y years I find that 

 scarcely one in many thousand seeds ever gets a chance to 

 sprout. There is seldom any crowding of the seedlings. The 

 nearest neighbors may be many feet or many j'ards apart, 

 and the saplings are much fewer than the seedlings. Some 

 advantageous position with reference to light or depth of 

 soil would account fully for their survival without any refer- 

 ence to small peculiarities in the plants themselves. More- 

 over, at bearing-time the question as to which trees shall 

 send seeds to such favorable spots seems to be decided not so 

 much by any peculiarities of the trees themselves or their 

 seeds as by the strength and direction of the wind at a given 

 moment and the obstacles that may happen to stand in the 

 way. It does not appear that fitness is decisive. There is 

 some crowchng. Indeed the grove itself might be called a 

 crowd of pine trees. But this crowding simply show's how 

 many plants can grow for many years close together by 

 individual adaptation to one another. The signs of such 

 mutual accommodation are much more apparent than any 

 signs of competition. As applied to this grove the idea of an 

 intense "struggle for existence" among its components 

 would seem to be quite fanciful. One might urge that a 

 Darwinian need not suppose any new species to be arising 

 under the conditions described. Very true; but our illustra- 

 tion was not chosen to show how species arise. It was selected 

 as fairly representing conditions to be met w'ith on every 

 hand — conditions essentially similar to those under which 

 all evolutionists believe that new species have somehow 

 originated. 



An extreme case such as might be afforded by desert con- 

 ditions increases our difficulties. Desert plants are always 

 few and far between. There always seems to be room for 

 many more. Competitions depending upon a surplus of 

 individuals would appear in general to be quite out of the 

 question. To be sure, each individual may be supposed to 

 have a hard time grov/ing under such severe conditions; but 

 the fact that it lives there shows that it can stand them, and 

 it seems to be enabled to do so by means of extraordinarily 



