XAYMACA; THE ISLAND OF MANY RIVERS 313 



ments to have them captured in their native home, 

 India, and brought to this far-distant island, his 

 efforts were successful in landing on his estate, 

 in 1872, nine mongoose. He told me that four 

 of these were males and five females. These 

 he liberated at several different points, and the 

 result was awaited with interest. The mongoose, 

 an inveterate hunter of all kinds of eggs, is 

 efficacious in India in ridding the country to a 

 large extent of snakes ; and as it is also equally 

 sagacious in finding the young of most kinds of 

 animals, its destructive powers can readily be im- 

 agined. The story of what the wily mongoose 

 accomplished in the island of Jamaica in the 

 short space of twenty years is well known to 

 many, but I will briefly summarize it. From the 

 nine animals introduced by Mr. Espeut there 

 soon developed a numerous progeny. The bal- 

 ance of nature in any given locality is so well- 

 adjusted that extreme preponderance of any given 

 form of life seems to be held well in check by 

 natural enemies in the struggle for existence; 

 with the entrance into a new environment of any 

 given organism, the conditions are probably often 

 more favorable for its increase than in the region 

 from which it has been taken, especially if this be 

 a remote one, for obviously there are no natural 

 enemies, it not being a concomitant part of the 

 machinery of nature at that point. The mon- 



