POPULATION PROBLEMS 195 



be few and widely spaced. The reduction of the num- 

 ber is more than compensated for by the correlated 

 reduction of the infantile mortality. Quahty wins 

 against quantity. The flower of the grass with one 

 seed exceedingly well equipped and well advanced 

 when set adrift is far more successful than the flower 

 of the orchid with hundreds of seeds which are lib- 

 erated poorly equipped and as it were prematurely. 



Another good example is the old-fashioned reHc 

 called Peripatus, which brings forth its young — minia- 

 tures of itself — after a very long ante-natal Hfe. The 

 fact that they are so highly developed at birth is surely 

 in adaptation to their precarious existence, without 

 armour and weapons, in this rough-and-tumble world. 



Thus in many different corners and at many differ- 

 ent levels in the animal kingdom we find mating (which 

 often means prolonged partnership), and parental care, 

 and, it may be, the beginning of family life. Time 

 and again animals have turned from the facile solu- 

 tion of spawning to economised reproduction which 

 secures survival by giving the offspring a good send- 

 off on the journey of life. What has actually hap- 

 pened has been that, in certain conditions of life, 

 survival has been with those types that varied in 

 the direction of reduced reproductivity and at the same 

 time in the direction of better equipment of the young 

 or on the line of parental care. 



In their reproductive relations, as in so many other 

 ways, wild birds command our admiration. Their sex- 



