THE STRUGGLE TO LIVE 401 



drouth and flood. No living being can escape from this 

 struggle. Each strives to feed itself, to save its own life, 

 to produce and protect its young. But in spite of all their 

 efforts only a few individuals out of the hundreds and thou- 

 sands born live to maturity. The great majority are killed 

 in the egg stage, or during adolescence. 



Selection by nature. — What individuals survive of the 

 many which are born? Presumably those best fitted for 

 life; those which are a little stronger, a little swifter, a little 

 hardier, a little less readily perceived by their enemies than 

 the others. We know from our observation of a brood of 

 young kittens or puppies that there are differences in new- 

 born individuals of the same kind, and even among those 

 born from the same mother. Thus) it is with all animals. 

 No two individuals even in the same brood are exactly 

 alike at birth. And the very few members of each brood 

 which do survive are almost always the hardier, stronger, 

 and swifter. They are the winners in the struggle for 

 existence. And this survival of the fittest, as it is called, 

 is practically a weeding out or selecting process of Nature. 

 She selects the fittest to live and to perpetuate their kind. 

 Their young in turn must undergo the struggle and the 

 selecting process, and again the fittest live. And so on 

 until the adjustment or harmonizing of the bodies and 

 habits of animals with the conditions of their life, their 

 environment, comes to be extremely fine and nearly perfect. 



Special means to get food. — With such a constant 

 struggle, such a race for food, it is not strange that we find 

 different animals having various kinds of special arrange- 

 ment for getting it. Those which live on plants can get 

 it in two ways, either by biting off the green leaves and stems 

 and crushing them in the mouth, or by thrusting a sucking 

 beak into the plant tissue and drawing out the sap. So 

 the different plant-feeding animals have the mouth specially 

 arranged for one or the other of these ways. Cattle and 



