273 
1879*] I s Nature Perfect ? 
majority of seeds and ova, from one or other cause, fail to 
be developed ; not only does every species press hard on its 
means of subsistence, or on the space where alone its being 
is possible. Even in matters where life is not directly con- 
cerned we find Dame Nature not lavish, not liberal, but 
more penurious than the wife of the thriftiest peasant- 
proprietor in rural France. Those colours which so fasci- 
nate the poet or the artist, and which seem to be spread in 
such royal lavishment over copse and meadow and heath, 
have all their purpose to fulfil ; they have to serve as an 
attraction to inserts which effeCt the fertilisation of the 
flower. The beauty and the odour which we so much admire 
appear only when this task is necessary, and when it is 
accomplished they are again withdrawn, just as at a banquet 
the lights are quenched and the decorations taken down 
when the guests have departed. 
To a sensitive mind it must be saddening to find that the 
woods, the fields, and the solitudes offer no soothing contrast 
to the exchange, the workshop, or the battle-field, and that 
on earth peace, repose, and harmony exist nowhere. But it 
is the duty of Science to “ perceive and declare ” whether 
the fadts and the laws recognised be joyous or grievous. 
In one sense, indeed, Nature may be called lavish. But 
it is an unkindly prodigality. She is reckless of life ; reck- 
less and wasteful, too, of heat, the prime condition of organic 
existence. Passing over the faCt that the bulk of the solar 
radiations travel out into the desert depths of space, while 
an infinitesimal portion alone falls upon any of the planets, 
very much of the heat which reaches our earth, at least, is 
radiated off again during the night. Carbonic acid gas, 
indeed, possesses the precious attribute of admitting the 
sun’s rays freely, and of being at the same time almost im- 
pervious to heat-rays of low tension, such as those given off 
by the earth. But this gas forms but a very small propor- 
tion of our atmosphere, and could not be sensibly increased 
on account of its injurious aCtion upon higher animal life. 
But if the non-poisonous gases oxygen and nitrogen had the 
same power as regards the radiation of heat, the climate of 
the world would be much improved, and spring frosts — the 
bane of the farmer and the gardener — would be rendered 
impossible. It is of course conceivable that some cause 
may exist which renders it impossible for oxygen and nitro- 
gen to possess this attribute without forfeiting their charac- 
teristics in other respedts. 
There is another feature which, outside of scientific 
circles, we hear commonly ascribed both to the individual 
