Waste. 
379 
1883.] 
forced to call accidental. A hundred seeds may have been 
produced by a most healthy plant, and they may have been 
matured by the most favourable weather ; but all this will 
not in the least secure them from being devoured by birds, 
nor will it aid them in finding a patch of fertile soil. Pre- 
cisely similar is the case with the eggs of animals. Thus 
we see that the first great process of elimination, which 
proscribes the many and lets the few survive, takes and can 
take no account of relative fitness or unfitness. 
We may ask here what becomes of the pollen-grain which 
fails to come in contact with the stigma of a flower of its 
own species ? what of the seed which never germinates, or 
of the egg which is never hatched ? Most of them will 
sooner or later be devoured ; some will putrefy, and contri- 
bute in their small way to the fertilisation of the soil ; but 
it may well be asked whether this is a sufficient reason for 
the production of an excess of elements chemically and 
physiologically adapted for the perpetuation of animal and 
vegetable life. The soil, it appears to us, might be manured 
more cheaply; animals might be fed at a less outlay of 
energy and material. That the seeds of plants should serve 
as the food of animals seems in many respeCts to have been 
especially guarded against by Nature. Witness the number 
of species where the seed itself is enclosed in a shell, hard, 
prickly, indigestible, or of disagreeable taste ; yet, whilst 
thus guarding many seeds from mishap, she produces them 
under circumstances where their ultimate germination is a 
work of chance. Again, it is well understood that the se- 
cretion of the sexual products is no slight demand upon the 
resources of the adult animal. In many species the male is 
exhausted by a simple a Ct of fecundation, and the female 
dies almost immediately after depositing her eggs. Why 
should a task be laid upon them a hundredfold greater than 
really eventuates in the birth of the next generation ? There 
is here, surely, if not direCt waste, nothing that can rank as 
economy, — no attempt to produce the maximum effect, or at 
least the effeCt needed at a minimum outlay. 
In close connexion with this part of the subject comes the 
reproduction of the feeble, the deformed, and the diseased. 
If we glance over the whole of the organic world we find in 
every species a wide range as regards strength, vigour, and 
approximation to what may be called the physical type of 
its kind. We find such differences prevailing not merely in 
man, in tame animals, and in cultivated plants, but among 
wild individuals. Now we may safely conclude, or rather 
we learn from experience, that the offspring of feeble and 
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