A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 73 



So time ravages a school of fish, save that 

 with them we have illustration of nature's 

 vast design to perpetuate the species. For 

 she has so fixed it that the more hazardous 

 the infancy of a species the more numerous 

 is the progeny to begin with. The average 

 American family is 2.5, but human infants 

 are protected, so that the species may keep 

 alive on such a slender birth rate. 



But, what with the storm and the snake, 

 the turtle and the pickerel, the frog and 

 the hawk, the muskrat and the fisherman, 

 the infancy of the fish is beset with peril. 

 But nature provides for this by a more pro- 

 lific birth rate. The carp deposits her eggs 

 promiscuously, and without parental care 

 they drift as the sport of the waters and the 

 food of water life; but she lays as high as 

 seven hundred thousand eggs, so that with 

 all the hazards the species multiplies. The 

 infancy of the bass being less perilous, ten 

 thousand eggs per spawn are sufficient to 

 keep the species alive. But even so, all life 

 presents a fierce struggle of life with death. 

 Time has taken the ten thousand eggs of 

 the mother of our school and winnowed 

 them till at five years there are but nineteen 



