RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 463 



be quite in the right in holding that the law extends to not 

 only the inferior animals, but to our own species also. The 

 lean, ill-fed sow and rabbit rear, it has been long known, a 

 greatly more numerous progeny than the same animals when 

 well cared for and fat ; and every horse and cattle breeder 

 knows, that to over-feed his animals proves a sure mode of 

 rendering them sterile. The sheep, if tolerably well pas- 

 tured, brings forth only a single lamb at a birth ; but if half- 

 starved and lean, the chances are that it may bring forth two 

 or three. And so it is also with the greatly higher human 

 race. Place them in circumstances of degradation and hard- 

 ship so extreme as almost to threaten their existence as in- 

 dividuals, and they increase, as if in behalf of the species, 

 with a rapidity without precedent in circumstances of greater 

 comfort. The aristocratic families of a country are conti- 

 nually running out ; and it requires frequent creations to 

 keep up the House of Lords ; while our poor people seem in- 

 creasing in some districts in almost the mathematical ratio. 

 The county of Sutherland is already more populous than it 

 was previous to the great clearings. In Skye, though fully 

 two-thirds of the population emigrated early in the latter half 

 of the last century, a single generation had scarce passed 

 ere the gap was completely filled ; and miserable Ireland, 

 had the human family no other breeding-place or nursery, 



mately recover. Next spring the wounded branch is found to bear its 

 bunches of blossoms ; the blossoms set into fruit ; and while in the other 

 portions of the plant all is vigorous and barren as before, the dying part 

 of it, as if sobered by the near prospect of dissolution, is found fulfilling 

 the proper end of its existence. Soil and climate, too, exert, it has been 

 often remarked, a similar influence. In the united parishes of Kirkmichael 

 and Culicuden, in the immediate neighbourhood of Cromarty, much of the 

 soil is cold and poor, and the exposure ungenial ; and*' " in most parts, 

 where hardwood has been planted," says the Rev. Mr Sage of Kesolis, in 

 his " Statistical Account," "it is stinted in its growth, and bark-bound. 

 Comparatively young trees of ash," he shrewdly adds, " are covered with 

 seed, an almost infallible sign that their natural growth is checked. The 

 leaves, too, fall off about the beginning of September." 



