JETSAM 353 



them) we feel that we are in the presence of an overflowing 

 form-fountain, prodigal multiplicity, endless resources. 



" But what an endlesse worke have I on hand 

 To count the sea's abundant progeny, 

 Whose fruitful seede farre passeth those on land, 

 And also those which wonne in th' azure sky. 

 How much more eath to tell the starres on hy, 

 Albe they endlesse seem in estimation, 

 Than to recount the sea's posterity, 

 So fertile be the floods in generation, 

 So huge their numbers and so numberlesse their nation." 



Another impression is of the wastage of life in regard 

 to which the physical forces are quite careless. There is 

 absolute insouciance in Nature. The beach is strewn with 

 jetsam as thickly as the woodland with withered leaves, but 

 it is a jetsam largely made up of corpses. There are, indeed, 

 empty shells tossed up, and the moults of crabs and various 

 items of this sort, but the great bulk of the jetsam consists 

 of corpses. 



In contemplating the jetsam we see one aspect of the 

 struggle for existence, the non-competitive aspect 4he 

 struggle between organisms and their physical environment, 

 between life and fate. What is thrown up on the shore 

 between tide-marks is only a small part of what is con- 

 tinually being dislodged by storms, and there can be no 

 doubt that there is a ceaseless thinning. It may be that 

 this sometimes leaves appreciably more room for those 

 creatures which are not thinned, and it may be that within 

 the members of a species those that vary in the direction 

 of resisting dislodgment survive in appreciably greater 

 numbers. But we have no data. It seems likely, indeed, 

 that in many cases there is no Natural Selection at all, for 

 that is a much narrower category than the Struggle for 

 Existence. From the absence of uniformity in the jetsam 

 in a tract of shore which we have studied for many years 

 we have a general impression that much of the elimination 

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