UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



well as the four-toed; the downy as well as his 

 larger and more powerful brother, the hairy; the 

 creepers and the nuthatches, with their slender 

 beaks, as well as those with powerful beaks; animals 

 without legs, as snakes, as well as animals with 

 legs; and the bipeds flourish as well as the quad- 

 rupeds; birds without the power of flight also flour- 

 ish; animals with horns succeed no better than ani- 

 mals without horns. Natural selection works in 

 each species, weeding out the weak and the imper- 

 fect, but the competition among species has only 

 the effect of clinching and developing the species, 

 not in originating new ones. 



The struggle for life, outside of man's disturb- 

 ing influence, is not so much a struggle of the weak 

 against the strong, or of one form against another, 

 as it is a struggle of the plant or animal with its 

 environment. K there were but one plant, or one 

 animal, or one tree on the earth, the life of that one 

 individual would be a struggle, much more, of 

 course, in some parts of the earth, and in certain 

 climates, than in others, and the severer the strug- 

 gle within certain limits, the greater the tenacity 

 of life. An oak-tree growing amid the rocks and 

 on a scanty soil has tougher fibre but less size and 

 grace of form than the tree growing on an alluvial 

 plain. A life is made strong by the obstacles it 

 overcomes. We do not feel the force of the wind or 

 the tide when we go with them. The balloonist rides 



276 



