56 DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND PLANTS 
with death every day of his life, —all without realizing either 
the magnitude or the intensity of the game he is playing.! 
The big fish eat the little ones ; the wolf and the jackal hunt 
beast and bird; the feathered tribe makes life intolerable for 
beetle, bug, and worm; and while beak and tooth and claw are 
busy with destruction, the parasite sucks the blood of the depre- 
dator or gnaws his vitals out as he hunts his defenseless prey. 
Nothing is exempt. It is a warfare not only of strength and 
cunning but of resistance and endurance ‘as well. 
This consumption of one species as food for another is im- 
mensely destructive of individuals. A single large animal in a 
day will consume seeds or small plants literally by the thousand; 
often, besides, it destroys as much as it eats. It is estimated that 
each cat on the average destroys fifty birds per year. ‘One large 
fish will consume immense numbers of small fry. Most eggs of 
birds serve as food for snakes or other birds. Only a few are 
hatched, and most of these follow the fate of the egg in which 
life was destroyed before it appeared.? 
Broadly speaking, and in general terms, animal life subsists 
upon plant life, and it in turn upon the mass of nonliving matter 
of which the world is made, so that the two together complete 
a kind of cycle, ending where they began, after the animal has 
finished its life and returned to dust. It will not do, however, 
to rest so important a matter on such generalized and imperfect 
statements. Briefly and substantially the facts are as follows: 
All living structures * are characterized by more or less highly 
organized compounds, of which carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen are 
1 Man is undoubtedly the only animal that has any true knowledge of death, 
or appreciation of it when it has occurred. Wild animals attack moving things 
and are entirely satisfied with simulated death; that is, they fight whatever 
moves, but desist when motion ceases unless impelled by hunger, in which case 
they do not wait for cessation of motion, but eat the prey alive or as soon as its 
escape no longer seems likely. 
2It is impossible to estimate the destruction wrought by such predatory 
animals as the blue jay, the kingbird, the hawk, and the cat. 
3 By this is meant the bodies of animals and the stems and leaves of trees 
and plants. 
