BRITISH FERTILITY. 203 



climbing where others fall, multiplying where others 

 perish, like certain weeds, which if you check the 

 seed will increase at the root, is more marked in the 

 forms that have come to us from Europe than in the 

 native inhabitants. Nearly everything that has come 

 to this country from the Old World has come pre- 

 pared to fight its way through and take possession. 

 The European or Old World man, the Old World 

 animals, the Old World grasses and grains, and weeds 

 and vermin, are in possession of the land, and the 

 native species have given way before them. The 

 honey-bee, with its greed, its industry, and its swarms, 

 is a fair type of the rest. The English house-spar- 

 row, which we were at such pains to introduce, breeds 

 like vermin and threatens to become a plague in the 

 land. Nearly all our troublesome weeds are Euro- 

 pean. When a new species gets a foothold here, it 

 spreads like fire. The European rats and mice would 

 eat us up, were it not for the European cats we 

 breed. The wolf not only keeps a foot-hold in old 

 and populous countries like France and Germany, 

 but in the former country has so increased of late 

 years that the government has offered an additional 

 bounty upon their pelts. When has an American 

 wolf been seen or heard in our comparatively sparsely 

 settled Eastern or Middle States ? They have dis- 

 appeared as completely as the beavers. Yet it is 

 probably true that, in a new country like ours, a ten- 

 dency slowly develops itself among the wild crea- 

 tures to return and repossess the land under the 



