90 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in 

 that district ! 



NO SUCH THIISTG AS CHANCE IN THE RESULT OF THE 

 STRUGGLE. 



p When we look at the plants and bushes 



clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted to 

 attribute their proportional numbers and kinds to what 

 we call chance. But how false a view is this ! Every 

 one has heard that, when an American forest is cut down, 

 a very different vegetation springs up ; but it has been 

 observed that ancient Indian ruins in the Southern United 

 States, which must formerly have been cleared of trees, 

 now display the same beautiful diversity and proportion 

 of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forest. What a 

 struggle must have gone on during long centuries between 

 the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its 

 seeds by the thousand ; what war between insect and in- 

 sect — ^between insects, snails, and other animals with birds 

 and beasts of prey — all striving to increase, all feeding on 

 each other, or on the trees, their seeds and seedlings, or 

 on the other plants which first clothed the ground and 

 thus checked the growth of the trees ! Throw up a hand- 

 ful of feathers, and all fall to the ground according to 

 definite laws ; but how simple is the problem 'where each 

 shall fall compared to that of the action and reaction of 

 the innumerable plants and animals which have deter- 

 mined, in the course of centuries, the proportional num- 

 bers and kinds of trees now growing on the old Indian 

 ruins! 



It is good thus to try in imagination to give 



" ' to any one species an advantage over another. 



Probably in no single instance should we know what to 



