Extinction of Organic Beings. 4Go 



empowered to " increase and multiply," without a check 

 to preserve a due equilibrium of species, would in the 

 warm and probably humid climates of the infant world, 

 have choked and destroyed each other ; — so that by the 

 time a check was furnished by the creation of some ani- 

 mate beings, many of the original and more tender plants 

 would have already become extinct. 



" All the plants of a given country," says Decandolle, 

 "are at war one with another; — the first which establish 

 themselves by chance in a particular spot, tend by the 

 mere occupancy of space, to exclude other species ; — the 

 greater choke the smaller ; — the longest lives replace those 

 which last for a shorter period ; — the more prolific gradu- 

 ally make themselves masters of the ground, which species 

 multiplying more slowly would otherwise fill."* 



" Every plant," observes Wilcke, " has its proper insect 

 allotted to it, to curb its luxuriancy and to prevent it from 

 multiplying to the exclusion of others. — Thus grass in mea- 

 dows sometimes flourishes so as to exclude all other plants ; 

 here the Phaleena graminis with her numerous progeny find 

 a well spread table ; they multiply in immense numbers, and 

 the farmer for some years laments the failure of his hay 

 crops ; but the grass being consumed, the moths die of 

 hunger, or remove to another place. Now the quantity of 

 grass being greatly diminished, the other plants which were 

 before choked by it spring up, and the ground becomes 

 variegated with a multitude of different species of flowers. 

 Had not nature given a commission to this minister for that 

 purpose, the grass would destroy a great number of species 

 of vegetables of which the equilibrium is now kept up."f 



From these facts, therefore, it is easily perceptible that 

 if the plants were diffusing themselves for thousands of years 

 over the earth, before the creation of the insect tribes, as 



* Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. ii. pp. 131 and 132. 

 t Ibid. 



