THE STRUGGLE FOR THE LIFE OF OTHERS. 237 



physical sense, are hopelessly out of court in any 

 scientific interpretation of things. But the point to 

 mark is that on the mechanical equivalent of what 

 afterwards come to have ethical relations Natural Se- 

 lection places a premium. Non-co-operative or feebly 

 co-operative organisms go to the wall. Those which 

 give mutual aid survive and people the world with 

 their kind. Without pausing to note the intricate 

 Co-operations of flowers which reward the eye of 

 the specialist — the subtle alliance with Space in 

 Dioecious flowers ; with Time in Dichogamous species, 

 and with Size in the Dimorphic and Trimorphic forms 

 — consider for a moment the extension of the principle 

 to the Seed and Fruit. Helpless, singlehanded, as is a 

 higher plant, with regard to the efficient fertilizing of 

 its flowers, an almost more difficult problem awaits it 

 when it comes to the dispersal of its seeds. If each 

 seed fell where it grew, the spread of the species 

 would shortly be at an end. But Nature, working on 

 the principle of Co-operation, is once more redundant 

 in its provisions. By a series of new alliances the 

 offspring are given a start on distant and unoccupied 

 ground ; and so perfect are the arrangements in this 

 department of the Struggle for the Life of Others that 

 single plants, immovably rooted in the soil, are yet 

 able to distribute their children over the world. By a 

 hundred devices the fruits and seeds when ripe are 

 entrusted to outside hands — provided with wing or 

 parachute and launched upon the wind, attached by 

 cunning contrivances to bird and beast, or dropped 

 into stream and wave and ocean-current, and so trans- 

 ported over the earth. 

 If we turn to the Animal Kingdom, the Principle o/ 



