CHAP. Ill The Struggle of Life 41 



Many animals are not monogamous, and this causes strife ; 

 a male seal, for instance, guards his harem with ferocity. 



(^Finally,physical nature is quitecarelessof life. Changes 

 of medium, temperature, and moisture, continually occur, 

 and the animals flee for their lives, adapt themselves to 

 new conditions, or perish. Cataclysms are rare, but 

 changes are common, and especially in such schools of 

 experience as the sea-shore we may study how vicissitude 

 has its victims or its victors. 



The struggle with Fate, that is to say, with changeful 

 surroundings, is more pleasant to contemplate than the 

 other kinds of struggle, for at the rigid mercilessness of 

 physical nature we shudder less than at the cruel competi- 

 tion between living things, and we are pleased with the 

 devices by which animals keep their foothold against wind 

 and weather, storm and tide, drought and cold. One illus- 

 tration must sufifice : drought is common, pools are dried up, 

 the inhabitants are left to perish. But often the organism 

 draws itself together, sweats off a protective sheath, which 

 is not a shroud, and waits until the rain refreshes the pools. 

 Not the simplest animals only, but some of comparatively 

 high degree, are thus able to survive desiccation. The 

 simplest animals encyst, and may be blown about by the 

 wind, but they rest where moisture moors them, and are 

 soon as lively as ever. Leaping a long way upwards, we 

 find that the mud- fish (Protopterus) can be transported 

 from Africa to Northern Europe, dormant, yet alive, 

 within its ball of clay. We do not believe in toads appear- 

 ing out of marble mantelpieces, and a palaeontologist will 

 but smile if you tell him of a frog which emerged from an 

 intact piece of old red sandstone, but amphibians may 

 remain for a long time dormant either in the mud of their 

 native pools or in some out-of-the-way chink whither they 

 had wandered in their fearsome youth. 



A shop which had once been used in the preparation 

 of bone-dust was after prolonged emptiness reinstated in a 

 new capacity. But it was soon fearfully infested with mites 

 (Glyciphagus), which had been harboured in crevices in a 

 strange state of dry dormancy. Every mite had in a sense 



