144 THE FALLACIES OF NATURAL SELECTION. 



dimly seen, or quite misunderstood. We behold the 

 face of Nature, bright with gladness; we "often see 

 superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, 

 that the birds which are idly singing around us, mostly 

 live on insects or seeds, and are thus continually de- 

 stroying life ; or, we forget how largely these songsters, 

 or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by 

 birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in 

 mind that, though food may be now superabundant, 

 it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year." 



Again he says : 



" Climate plays an important part in determining the 

 average numbers of a species; and periodical seasons 

 of extreme cold or drought, I believe to be the most 

 effective of all checks. I estimated that the winter of 

 1854-55 destroyed four-fifths of the birds on my own 

 grounds; and this is a tremendous destruction when 

 we remember that ten per cent, is an extraordinarily 

 severe mortality from epidemics with man. The action 

 of the climate seems at first sight to be quite independ- 

 ent of the struggle for existence, but in so far as cli- 

 mate chiefly acts in reducing food, it brings on the 

 most severe struggle between the individuals, whether 

 of the same or of distinct species, which subsist on the 

 same kind of food. Even when climate, for instance, 

 extreme cold, acts directly, it will be the least vigorous, 

 or those which have got least food, through the ad- 

 vancing winter, which will suffer most. When we 

 travel from south to north, or from a damp region to 

 a dry, we invariably see some species gradually get- 

 ting rarer and rarer, and finally disappearing; and the 

 change of climate being conspicuous, we are tempted 

 to attribute the whole effect to its direct action. But, 

 this is a very false view; we forget that each species, 

 even where it most abounds, is constantly suffering 

 enormous destruction at some period of its life, from 



