BUTTERCUPS ; A STUDY OF SPECIES 301 



Our list of buttercups shows us that a number of closely 

 allied species, very similar in structure and mode of life, 

 may exist side by side. Indeed it is the rule, though not 

 without its exceptions, that wherever we find a plant 

 or an animal very abundant, it is accompanied by several 

 nearly allied species. Chickweeds, clovers, cinquefoils, 

 bedstraws, groundsels, thistles, hawkweeds, speedwells, 

 docks, spurges, rushes, pondweeds and sedges are familiar 

 examples of the rule. Among animals we might quote 

 voles, warblers, owls, sandpipers, terns, gulls, house-flies, 

 hover-flies, harlequin-flies, gnats, &c. 



It is singular at first sight that many nearly allied 

 species, all particularly numerous in individuals, should 

 be able to exist in the same district. One would have 

 thought that competition would speedily bring about a 

 signal reduction of numbers, but such reduction is by no 

 means inevitable. Human affairs, which have been more 

 closely studied than the relations of animals and plants, 

 show us why. Take any industry by which money has 

 been made quickly and with apparent ease, such as the 

 newspaper industry. We readily understand that where 

 newspapers are profitable, newspapers will come to abound. 

 Many will flourish side by side even in the same city. To 

 an observer ignorant of the language in which the news- 

 papers are printed they might seem very much alike. It 

 will altogether escape his notice that the newspapers differ 

 in price, in politics, and in the class of readers which they 

 address, that one gives particularly good stock exchange 

 news, that another has the confidence of farmers, and that 

 a third describes football matches in language of un- 

 common vivacity. Our ignorance of the circumstances 

 under which the buttercups compete with one another is 

 almost total, but we may judge from their commonness 

 that they enjoy special advantages over other plants. 

 These advantages, whatever they may be, make it intel- 

 ligible that several closely allied species should be able 

 to flourish side by side. Moreover, our common butter- 



