BRITISH FERTILITY 185 



ing where others perish, like certain weeds, wliich 

 if you check the seed, will increase at the root, is 

 more marked in the forms that have come to us 

 from Europe than in the native inhabitants. Nearly 

 everything that has come to this country from the 

 Old AVorld has come prepared to fight its way 

 through and take possession. The European or 

 Old World man, the Old World animals, the Old 

 World grasses and grains, and weeds and vermin, 

 are in possession of the land, and the native species 

 have given way before them. The honey-bee, with 

 its greed, its industry, and its swarms, is a fair 

 type of the rest. The English house sparrow, 

 which we were at such pains to introduce, breeds 

 like vermin and threatens to become a plague in the 

 land. Nearly all our troublesome weeds are Euro- 

 pean. When a new species gets a foothold here, 

 it spreads like fire. The European rats and mice 

 would eat us up, were it not for the European cats 

 we breed. The wolf not only keeps a foothold in 

 old and populous countries like France and Ger- 

 many, but in the former country has so increased 

 of late years that the government has offered an 

 additional bounty upon their pelts. When has an 

 American wolf been seen or heard in our compar- 

 atively sparsely settled Eastern or jMiddle States'? 

 They have disappeared as completely as the beavers. 

 Yet is it probably true that, in a new country like 

 ours, a tendency slowly develops itself among tlie 

 wild creatures to return and repossess the land 

 under the altered conditions. It is so with the 



