The Cannibal Habit in the Male 41 



destroyed is a fixed determinate quantity — constant 

 and unvarying. 



Next, recuperation after decimation by forest fires, 

 organised battles, pestilence, or famine, is brought 

 about by the surviving females having a larger space 

 and greater ease in concealing their broods. The con- 

 sequence is that more broods are saved, and conse- 

 quently the gaps are quickly filled up. It thus becomes 

 evident that Darwin's " checks " are not checks at 

 all, but only mere temporary calamities, which are soon 

 overcome and result in a return to the normal popu- 

 lation very shortly after the cessation of the cause. It 

 will be seen that nature had a great economic end in 

 view when she endowed her species with such power 

 of procreation. Nature's checks are not the same for all 

 species ; there is one for man, one for unprolific 

 another for prolific herbivora and carnivora, another 

 for raptorial birds, and many others. The destruction 

 of spawn and small fry by adult fishes is Nature's 

 method in this domain. There is here no concealment 

 on the part of the females, or a special instinct on the 

 part of the males, in devouring the spawn, for the 

 females take as active a part as the males in this, 

 whether of their own or other kinds. But Nature has 

 provided against the annihilation of her finny species 

 from this universal propulsion to devour the spawn 

 by endowing them with enormous procreative powers. 

 The spawn of a cod amounts to the enormous total of 

 9,000,000 eggs. Assuming a cod produces in its life- 

 time 50,000,000 eggs, of these only two may be hatched 

 and come to maturity. But the enormous destruction 

 of the cod in the various seas in which fishing is 

 carried on does not, from age to age, seem to affect their 

 numbers. The continual destruction of adults by 

 fishermen permits a multitude of young cod to grow 

 to maturity, which otherwise would have perished, and 



