NEW GLEANINGS IN FIELD AND WOOD 



explicit, and not the mere statement "that it is 

 natural law." I wonder that he did not put a 

 special-delivery stamp on his letter. He is 

 probably wondering why I am so dilatory in answer- 

 ing. 



There seems to be an inherent tendency in 

 nearly all living things to scatter, to seek new fields. 

 They are obeying the first command to increase 

 and multiply. Then it is also a question of food, 

 which is limited in every locality. Robins do not 

 breed in flocks, but in pairs. Every gas is a 

 vacuum to every other gas; and every locality is 

 a vacuum to the different species of birds that 

 breed there. The seed-eaters, the fruit-eaters, the 

 insect-eaters, and the omnivorous feeders, like the 

 robin hi other words, the sparrows, the fly- 

 catchers, the warblers may and do all live to- 

 gether in harmony in the same narrow area. 



The struggle of which we have heard so much 

 since Darwin's time is mainly a natural sifting and 

 distributing process, such as that going on all about 

 us by the winds and the waters. The seeds carried 

 by the winds do not thrive unless they chance to 

 fall on suitable ground. All may be "fit" to sur- 

 vive and yet fail unless they are also lucky. What 

 so frail as a spider's web, and yet how the spiders 

 thrive! Nature gives the weak many advantages. 



There is a slow, bloodless struggle of one species 

 with another the fleet with the slow, the cunning 



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