428 Life and Immortality. 



life, or we fail to remember how largely these songsters, or 

 their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and 

 beasts of prey. Yes, we do not always bear in mind that, 

 though food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all 

 seasons of each recurring year. The term, Struggle for 

 Existence, must be used in a large and metaphorical sense. 

 It must be construed to include the dependence of one being 

 on another, and also not only the life of the individual but 

 also its success in leaving offspring. Two carnivores, in a 

 time of scarcity of food, may be truly said to struggle with 

 each other for maintenance of life. But a plant on the edge 

 of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, 

 though, properly speaking, it is dependent for its existence 

 upon the moisture. A plant, however, that annually produces 

 many thousand seeds of which on an average only one comes 

 to maturity, may in a much truer sense be said to struggle 

 with the plants of the same and other kinds which already 

 invest the ground. While the mistletoe is dependent on the 

 apple and some other trees, yet it cannot be said, unless in a 

 far-fetched sense, to struggle with these trees, for, if too 

 many of these parasites are found upon the same tree, it will 

 certainly languish and die. Several seedling mistletoes, how- 

 ever, growing close together upon the same branch, may 

 more truly be said to struggle with each other. 



From the high rate at which all organic beings tend to 

 increase, there must inevitably follow a Struggle for Existence. 

 Every being which, during its natural lifetime, produces 

 several eggs or seeds, must necessarily suffer destruction 

 during some part of that period, and during some season or 

 occasional year, otherwise, on the principle of Geometrical 

 Increase, its numbers would become so inordinately exces- 

 sive that no country would be able to support its product. 

 Therefore, as more individuals are produced than can pos- 

 sibly survive, there must be in every case a Struggle for 

 Existence, either one individual struggling with another of 

 the same kind, or with individuals of distinct kinds or species, 



