The Cannibal Habit in the Male 33 



starvation by reason of possessing inferior variations. 

 It will surely be admitted that in this case three out of 

 every four would be in a starving condition, yet no 

 traveller has ever encountered young tigers that were 

 not robust and in good condition of lusty health. No 

 sportsman has ever killed an emaciated tiger unless it 

 had become mangy and lean from old age. 



If, as Darwinians hold, nine out of every ten perish 

 in the struggle for existence, either from starvation or 

 by the claws and teeth of their own and other species, 

 we must suppose that every haunt of the carnivora 

 would exhibit manifold traces and signs of such dire 

 and continuous slaughter, and yet, as has been stated, 

 the testimony of all travellers in the forest, the jungle, 

 and the desert is that they find no cases of famished 

 animals, and only very few carnivora done to death 

 in battle. If true, every mountain tract, jungle, and 

 desert home of feral life would abound in visible evi- 

 dences of the demoniac struggle for existence, such as 

 would make it impossible for an acute observer of the 

 phenomena of nature to say that the causes which 

 check the increase of carnivorous animals were " most 

 obscure." This is a purely logical statement of the 

 case and cannot be confuted. 



The only possible conclusion seems to be that the off- 

 spring of the great proportion of the carnivora perish 

 in their immaturity. Adopt this explanation and the 

 causes which check the natural tendency of each 

 species to increase are no longer " most obscure." 

 Darwin found them so because he began to look for 

 them after they had fully operated. Nature would be 

 vastly more cruel if she sent her enormous reproduction 

 into the struggle to be starved, or mangled to death by 

 tooth and claw in their youthful prime. It is to prevent 

 such a struggle for existence and to preserve her off- 

 spring from such a fate that she painlessly eliminates 



