166 The Bible of Nature 



worm is not exactly what one would call a noble 

 animal, but after it gets settled down in its host 

 it is remarkably well adapted to its own peculiar 

 conditions of material well-being. The golden 

 eagle is a much finer creature than, say, the mi- 

 crobe of grouse disease; but, as things are, the 

 chances of the golden eagle's survival in Britain 

 are much less than those of the grouse-microbe. 



There are some naturalists who will not accept 

 the interpretation of the struggle for existence 

 which has been outlined above, which seems on the 

 whole consistent with Darwin's. Thus Professor 

 Ray Lankester writes, it seems to us unwarrant- 

 ably, "In Nature's struggle for existence, death, 

 immediate obliteration, is the fate of the van- 

 quished." ''The struggle between species is by 

 no means universal, but in fact very rare. The 

 preying of one species on another is a moderated 

 affair of balance and adjustment which may be 

 described rather as an accommodation than a 

 struggle." " The ' struggle for existence,' to which 

 Darwin assigned importance, is not a struggle be- 

 tween species, but one between closely similar 

 members of the same species." ("The Kingdom 

 of Man," 1907.) As a matter of fact, Darwin 

 assigned importance to many different forms of 

 the struggle for existence. Even when we take 

 his paragraph headed, "Struggle for life most se- 

 vere between individuals and variations of the 



