DARWINISM. 13 



tained only two grains, still, at that rate of increase, 

 a single grain would in thirty years be represented by 

 more than a thousand millions of grains 1 . What, then, 

 would be the position of the world, if, starting with a 

 thousand millions of grains, this rate of increase were 

 allowed to continue unchecked, not for thirty years, 

 but for three thousand ? But Mr. Darwin has calcu- 

 lated in regard to the elephant, which is reckoned the 

 slowest breeder of all known animals, that, according 

 to the very lowest probable rate of natural increase, a 

 single pair would in five hundred years have a progeny 

 of fifteen million living elephants 2 . Now fancy an 

 island like our own, only in a climate suitable to 

 elephants, into which a couple should have found their 

 way a thousand years back. At the end of five hundred 

 years, if all that were born were enabled to breed un- 

 checked, there would be at least fifteen millions of their 

 huge descendants stalking about the land ; but, at the 

 end of five hundred years more, there would be one 

 hundred and twelve millions of millions of elephants. 

 Goodness ! What a stupendous menagerie ! What a 

 zoological garden ! What a prospect at the end of the 

 next five hundred years ! And all this time, remember, 

 according to our sentimental, philanthropic, philele- 

 phantine, nature-improving scheme, the men and women, 

 the donkeys with a soul above thistles, the thistles no 

 longer toothsome to donkeys, the mice, the rats, the 

 cats, the oaks, the cabbages, the toadstools, would have 



1 1,073,741,824 grains. 



2 ' On the Origin of Species,' p. 74. Fourth Edition. 



