100 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



convenient. We have seen that man by selection can 

 certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic 

 beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of 

 slight but__useful variations, given to him by the hand 

 of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter 

 see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as 

 immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts as the 

 works of Nature are to those of Art. 



We will now discuss in a little more detail the strug- 

 gle for existence. In my future work this subject will 

 be treated, as it well deserves, at greater length. The 

 elder De Candolle and Lyell have largel}^ and philosophi- 

 cally shown that all organic beings are exposed to severe 

 competition. In regard to plants, no one has treated this 

 subject with more spirit and ability than W. Herbert, 

 Dean of Manchester, evidently the result of his great hor- 

 ticultural knowledge. Nothing is easier than to admit in 

 words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more 

 difficult — at least I have found it so — than constantly to 

 bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly 

 ingrained in the mind, the whole economy of nature, with 

 every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, 

 and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. 

 We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we 

 often see superabundance of food; we do not see or we 

 forget that the birds which are idly singing round us 

 mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly 

 destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, 

 or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds 

 and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind that, 

 though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at 

 all seasons of each recurring year. 



