174 The Morality of Nature 



destructive beasts of prey maintain themselves, and con- 

 tinue to force upon such gregarious creatures as remain 

 their neighbors the defensive habits of concealment, as well 

 as those of flight and association. And here some degree 

 of armed force, which almost all creatures resort to in 

 extremity, is cultivated, even by many whose race life is 

 preferably harmonious. And in the sea and the air the two 

 types may be seen similarly mingled. 



Now in all these circumstances, observation of animals 

 whose life we can comprehend and watch, reveals the asso- 

 ciated or gregarious creatures in the ascendancy, not only 

 in numerical majority, but really and in fact the growing 

 occupants of the best parts of the earth, while the predatory 

 types exist as parasites or scourges when in their extreme 

 form; and thus heavily penalized; or they increase slowly 

 by mixed conduct, when, despite destructive habits, their 

 partially gregarious life is procuring them some advantage. 

 Observe the natural numbers of deer, of cattle, of rabbits, 

 of squirrels and the rest of the harmless and gregarious 

 creatures of land, and in the air the flocks of swallows, 

 pigeons, ducks and gulls and other birds; and in the water 

 the shoals of salmon, and herring, cod and mackerel and 

 the thousand big and little unarmed fishes. And then re- 

 mark the lions and tigers and leopards of the solitudes, and 

 count their small numbers, necessarily limited, and obviously 

 lessening, and note the probability of extermination which 

 awaits them; and see the eagles and hawks of the air and 

 the sharks and alligators of the waters, all of which are 

 by their own lives prevented from becoming numerous in 

 the full sense of the word, even under the most favoring 



