The Effects of Chance 
in Plants: “ As the whole of the animal kingdom 
ultimately lives upon the vegetable, plants must 
supply the entire quantity of food supplied, not 
to add innumerable vegetable parasites as well, 
for both young and old. Myriads of germinating 
seeds perish accordingly, being destroyed by slugs 
and other mollusca, and ‘mildews,’ etc. But far 
more seeds and spores — about 50,000,000 of 
these it is calculated can be borne in a single 
male-fern — never germinate at all. They fall 
where the conditions of life are unfavourable 
and perish, This misfortune is not due to 
any inadaptiveness in themselves, but to the 
surrounding conditions which will not let them 
germinate. Thus thousands of acorns and other 
fruits, as of elder, drop upon the ground in and 
by our hedges, road-sides, copses, and elsewhere ; 
but scarcely any or even no seedlings are to be 
seen round the trees.” 
Every year thousands of birds perish in the 
great migratory flight, others succumb in a 
cyclone, a fierce tropical storm, a prolonged 
drought, a severe frost. Here death overtakes 
multitudes, all that dwell in a locality, the weak 
and the strong, the swift and the slow alike. 
This objection may be met by saying that in 
the long run it is the fittest that will survive. 
This is true. The objection is nevertheless of 
“importance in showing how exceedingly uncertain 
must be the action of natural selection if it have but 
D 49 
