BIRD-HAUNTED LONDON 107 



Had this evil time lasted a week longer than it 

 did, the mortality must have been a heavy one, and, 

 as it was, those oozy shallows saved many of the 

 feathered from untimely death. It is starvation, not 

 cold, that kills the birds — its tooth is not so keen to 

 penetrate their warm wrappings and intensely beating 

 heart beneath it, unless insufficient food and drink 

 can slow it down. 



Darwin, it will be remembered, projected a study 

 of natural checks to over-population, and it is a great 

 pity that he did not write it, since it must have very 

 largely modified the paragraph headed " Struggle for 

 Life Most Severe between Individuals and Varieties 

 of the Same Species " in the Origin of Species, a para- 

 graph (with very inadequate evidence to it) mainly 

 responsible for the now superannuated theory that the 

 system of nature is an incarnadined " gladiatorial show." 

 It is a great pity, for that theory has perhaps done 

 more harm, inflicted more misery, and sanctioned the 

 rapacious spirit of commercialism more thoroughly than 

 any other idea of civilized times. It would be im- 

 possible here so much as to attempt to describe how 

 that theory has been displaced by a broader and 

 deeper reading of animate nature, but it is relevant to 

 point out that, quite apart from the quintessential im- 

 portance of migration as a method of solving the 

 economic problem of feeding many mouths with little 

 food, birds actually combine rather than compete 

 together when food is scarce. The phenomenon of 

 winter flocks is entirely against the competition theory, 

 and one is inclined to invite those museum specialists 

 with their dismal illusions of nature's fratricidal 

 warfare to step into the open air and watch a winter 

 procession of tits. For one tit in a flock of tits can 

 find more food than if he were solitary, since he 

 depends on a hundred eyes rather than on two, 

 apart from other advantages for self-preservation. 

 The conditions of inanimate nature are equally against 

 the theory. It is a fact that the world is not over- 

 but under-populated by the higher animals — far too 

 under-populated, alas ! — and climatic changes operate 



