Improving on Nature 



thousand linnets, lizards or leopards, 

 you would instantly confess the truth. 

 Our laws license, protect and encourage 

 the perpetuation of the incapable, the 

 incompetent, the malformed, the un- 

 desirables of every name and nature. 

 With the beasts and birds there is 

 only the survival of the fittest. Only 

 the sound and normal ones, or those of 

 superior cunning, can hold their own. 

 The result is splendid uniformity in 

 all the most vital characteristics. 



It is only when man begins directing 

 the procedure that the weaklings and 

 helpless begin frequently to appear. 

 No one ever heard of hog cholera 

 getting a wild boar, or tuberculosis 

 claiming a Rocky Mountain goat. 

 Most wild animals die the victims of 

 some other animal's cunning, of star- 

 vation — as did the quail in our vicinity 

 one snowy winter — or of old age; and 

 eighty percent of them are fine speci- 

 mens of their breed as contrasted with, 

 say, twenty percent of equally well- 



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