UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



well as the four- toed; the downy as well as his 

 larger and more powerful brother, the hairy; the 

 creepers and the nuthatches, with their slender 

 beaks, as well as those with powerful beaks; animals 

 without legs, as snakes, as well as animals with 

 legs; and the bipeds flourish as well as the quad- 

 rupeds; birds without the power of flight also flour- 

 ish; animals with horns succeed no better than ani- 

 mals without horns. Natural selection works in 

 each species, weeding out the weak and the imper- 

 fect, but the competition among species has only 

 the effect of clinching and developing the species, 

 not in originating new ones. 



The struggle for life, outside of man's disturb- 

 ing influence, is not so much a struggle of the weak 

 against the strong, or of one form against another, 

 as it is a struggle of the plant or animal with its 

 environment. If there were but one plant, or one 

 animal, or one tree on the earth, the life of that one 

 individual would be a struggle, much more, of 

 course, in some parts of the earth, and in certain 

 climates, than in others, and the severer the strug- 

 gle within certain limits, the greater the tenacity 

 of life. An oak-tree growing amid the rocks and 

 on a scanty soil has tougher fibre but less size and 

 grace of form than the tree growing on an alluvial 

 plain. A life is made strong by the obstacles it 

 overcomes. We do not feel the force of the wind or 

 the tide when we go with them. The balloonist rides 

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