DAME NATURE AND HER CHILDREN 



every organism to its environment, — who can 

 teU? 



The plants are all wise in their own way; they 

 have to be, or cease to exist. The cultivated ones 

 cannot shift for themselves Uke the weeds and wild 

 growths; they have been too long dependent upon 

 the care and culture of man for that; thrown upon 

 their own resources, they perish, or else revert to 

 the habits of their wild ancestors, as the animals 

 do. 



I suppose it is impossible for us to conceive of the 

 discipline, the struggle, the schooling, the selection, 

 that all species of animals and plants have gone 

 through in the course of biologic time, and that has 

 given them the hardiness, the hold upon life, that 

 they now possess. The strongest, the cleverest, the 

 fittest have always had the best chance to survive. 

 Natural competition has constantly weeded out the 

 feeble, and still does so; but it does not do it so thor- 

 oughly among men as among mice, because mice 

 have no medicine, no surgery, no hospitals, no 

 altruism. 



Different species of animals and plants differ 

 greatly in their power to get on in the world. The 

 ruffed grouse, for example, has a much deeper hold 

 upon life than his cousin the quaU, mainly because 

 he is a more miscellaneous feeder. In deep snows 

 the quail is in danger of perishing for want of food, 

 but the grouse takes to the tree-tops and subsists 

 85 



