16 METHODS OF EVOLUTION [CHAP. 



Nature ever produces such defects in the structure 

 and functions of seedling plants, or young animals. 

 Moreover, he makes no mention of the nature of 

 any " injurious" structures which Darwin assumed 

 to account for these defective senses. It is all a 

 pure assumption to support the theory of natural 

 selection, in order to account for the imaginary 

 way by which the elimination of the great 

 majority was supposed to take place. 



The real causes are as follows among plants. 

 As the whole of the animal kingdom ultimately 

 lives upon the vegetable, plants must supply the 

 entire quantity of food required, not to add 

 innumerable vegetable parasites as well, for both 

 young and old. Myriads of germinating seeds 

 perish accordingly, being destroyed by slugs and 

 other mollusca, and "mildews," etc. But far 

 more seeds and spores about 50,000,000 of these 

 it is calculated can be borne in a single male- 

 fern l never germinate at all. They fall where 

 the conditions of life are unfavourable, and perish. 

 This misfortune is not due to any inadaptive- 

 ness in themselves, but to the surrounding con- 

 ditions, which will not let them germinate. Thus 

 thousands of acorns and other fruits, as of elder, 

 drop upon the ground in and by our hedges, road- 

 sides, copses, and elsewhere ; but scarcely any or 

 even no seedlings are to be seen round the trees. 



1 Bower's, " The Origin of a Land Flora/' p. 23. 



