438 THE CAUSES OF THE xi 



You will see from this that, at the end of the 

 first year the single plant will have produced fifty 

 more of its kind ; by the end of the second year 

 these will have increased to 2,500 ; and so on. in 

 succeeding years, you get beyond even trillions ; 

 and I am not at all sure that I could tell you what 

 the proper arithmetical denomination of the total 

 number really is ; but, at any rate, you will under- 

 stand the meaning of all those noughts. Then 

 you see that, at the bottom, I have taken the 

 51,000,000 of square miles, constituting the sur- 

 face of the dry land ; and as the number of square 

 feet are placed under and subtracted from the 

 number of seeds that would be produced in the 

 ninth year, you can see at once that there would 

 be an immense number more of plants than there 

 would be square feet of ground for their accom- 

 modation. This is certainly quite enough to 

 prove my point; that between the eighth and ninth 

 year after being planted the single plant would have 

 stocked the whole available surface of the earth. 



This is a thing which is hardly conceivable it 

 seems hardly imaginable yet it is so. It is 

 indeed simply the law of Malthus exemplified. 

 Mr. Malthus was a clergyman, who worked out 

 this subject most minutely and truthfully some 

 years ago ; he showed quite clearly and although 

 he was much abused for his conclusions at the 

 time, they have never yet been disproved and 

 never will be he showed that in consequence of 



