202 BRITISH FERTILITY. 



the spawning waters have imparted their virility to 

 the land. 'T is a tropical and an arctic nature com- 

 bined, the fruitfulness of one and the activity of the 

 other. 



The national poet is Shakespeare. In him we get 

 the literary and artistic equivalents of this teeming, 

 racy, juicy land and people. It needs just such a 

 soil, just such a background, to account for him. The 

 poetic value of this continence on the one hand, and 

 of this riot and prodigality on the other, is in his 

 pages. 



The teeming human populations reflect only the 

 general law : there is the same fullness of life in 

 the lower types, the same push and hardiness. It is 

 the opinion of naturalists that the prevailing Euro- 

 pean forms are a later production than those of the 

 southern hemisphere or of the United States, and 

 hence, according to Darwin's law, should be more 

 versatile and dominating. That this last fact holds 

 good with regard to them, no competent observer 

 can fail to see. When European plants and ani- 

 mals come into competition with American, the lat- 

 ter, for the most part, go to the wall, as do the na- 

 tives in Australia. Or shall we say that the native 

 species flee before the advent of civilization, the de- 

 nuding the land of its forests, and the European spe- 

 cies come in and take their place? Yet the fact 

 remains, that that trait or tendency to persist in the 

 face of obstacles, to hang on by tooth and nail, ready 

 in new expedients, thriving where others starve, 



