162 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
germs, come into life, and propagate themselves. By far 
the greater number of germs perish in the earliest stage of 
life, and it is only some favoured organisms which manage to 
develop, and actually survive the first period of early youth, 
and finally succeed in propagating themselves. This import- 
ant fact is easily proved by a comparison of the number of 
eggs in a given species with the number of individuals which 
exist of this species. These numerical relations show the 
most striking contrast. There are, for example, species of 
fowls which lay great numbers of eggs, and yet are among 
the rarest of birds; and the bird which is said to be the 
commonest (the most widely spread) of all, the stormy petrel 
(Procellaria glacialis), lays only a single egg. The relation 
is the same in other animals. There are many very rare 
invertebrate animals, which lay immense quantities of eggs ; 
and others again which produce only very few eggs, and yet 
are among the commonest of animals. Take, for example, 
the proportion which is observed among the human tape- 
worms. Each tape-worm produces within a short period 
millions of eggs, while man, in whom these tape-worms are 
lodged, forms a far smaller number of eggs, and yet for- 
tunately there are fewer tape-worms than human beings. 
In like manner, among plants there are many splendid 
orchids, which produce thousands of seeds and yet are very 
rare, and some kinds of asters (Compositze), which have but 
few seeds, are exceedingly common. 
This important fact might be illustrated by an immense 
number of examples. It is evidently, therefore, not the 
number of actually existing germs which indicates the num- 
ber of individuals which afterwards come into life and 
maintain themselves in life; but rather the case is this, 
oa 
