164 THE INFANCY OF ANIMALS 



Darwin himself showed the fallacy of this view. The 

 mortality is not a stimulus to prolificness, but, on the 

 contrary, the prolificness begets mortality ; for from the 

 vast numbers of young to be met with at hatching time, 

 a lure is offered, to predatory animals of all kinds, the last 

 to join the marauders being always man himself, and 

 he outdoes them all in his power of destructiveness. We 

 must regard prolificness as a specific character answering 

 to extravagance of ornament or gorgeousness of colour in 

 other species. 



