12 SYMBIOSIS 



agreeable to our fancies by the usual methods ; yet the result is 

 generally obtained at the expense of evolution. The late Dr. 

 A. Russel Wallace mentioned the fact that the inhabitants of the 

 Amazonian region have a way of inducing obesity in green parrots 

 in order to make them present the most magnificent scarlet and 

 yellow feathers. Instead of feeding them on seeds, their natural 

 food, they feed them on fat. Now feeding on seeds on the part 

 of the bird is in Nature generally associated with the important 

 bio-economic rdle of the bird as seed-disperser. That is to say 

 the normal feeding habit of the parrot is in accordance with a 

 most important symbiotic relation which has been of tremendous 

 consequence in the evolution of plant and animal, and which 

 cannot be lightly infringed. The Amazonian bird fancier obtains 

 his ends at the expense of Symbiosis. But such ends as his 

 are not the ends of Nature. To achieve conspicuous colouration 

 is but poor compensation for the loss of essential capital in other 

 directions, such as is certain to ensue with non-symbiotic feeding. 



The case of another parrot, the Australian Kea, shows that 

 a general deterioration of character follows in the wake of a 

 transition from symbiotic to non-symbiotic feeding. This bird, 

 driven into the mountains by man, has taken to rank in-feeding 

 and in fact to murder. It has become a sheep-killer and an 

 " outlaw," and is rapidly undergoing a change for the worse in 

 its once kindly and sociable character. Convoluta and changing 

 parrots, therefore, have this in common : the species are not 

 duly, i.e., symbiotically, balanced in Nature. 



In his little work on Degeneration, Sir E. Ray Lankaster 

 long ago stated that : 



" Any new set of conditions occuring to an animal which render its food 

 and safety very easily attained, seem to lead as a rule to degeneration." 



If food and safety should not be too easily obtained, lest 

 degeneration ensue, it is plain (if moral is what is conducive to 

 progress, and immoral that which retards evolution) that a point 

 of quasi-moral importance is involved in nutrition, and we 

 should not be satisfied to shirk the issue. There must be a 

 principle of Natural Ethics which governs nutrition a principle 

 by which the instincts of plants and animals are normally guided 

 so as to obviate degeneration and its dire results. I shall revert 

 to this matter in subsequent chapters. Meanwhile we may 

 conclude that if Symbiosis, in virtue of its perfected division of 

 labour, is a means of obtaining a super-adequacy of force from 



