256 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
predominates, and that every year the struggle for life some- 
what alters their relations. 
Every single species of animals and plants would have 
densely peopled the whole earth’s surface in a short time, if 
it had not had to struggle against a number of enemies and 
hostile influences. Even Linnzus calculated that if an 
annual plant only produced two seeds (and there is not one 
which produces so few), it would have yielded in twenty 
years a million of individuals. Darwin has calculated of 
elephants, which of all animals seem the slowest to increase, 
that in seven hundred and fifty years the descendants of a 
single pair would amount to nineteen millions of indi- 
viduals; this is supposing that every elephant, during its 
period of fertility (from the 30th to the 90th year), pro- 
duced only three pairs of young ones, and survived itself 
to its hundredth year. In like manner the increase 
of the number of human beings—if calculated on the 
average proportion of births to population, and no hin- 
drances to the natural increase stood in the way—would be 
such as to double the total in twenty-five years. In every 
century the total number of men would have increased six- 
teen-fold; whereas we know that the total number of 
human beings increases but slowly, and that the increase of 
population is very different in different countries. While 
European tribes spread over the whole globe, other tribes or 
species of men every year draw nearer to their complete 
extinction. This is the case especially with the redskins of 
America, and with the copper-coloured natives of Australia. 
Even if these races were to propagate more abundantly than 
the white Europeans, yet they would sooner or later succumb 
to the latter in the struggle for life. But of all human 
