Waste . 
380 
tjuly, 
diseased plants and animals inherit the parental short- 
comings in a heightened degree ; yet we find too often that 
bodily superiority in animal or plant is not necessarily ac- 
companied by marked fecundity, and that, on the other hand, 
debility and sterility are far, very far, from keeping equal 
step. Who has not seen a mean, shabby, little oak tree, — 
a vegetable hobgoblin, and living libel on its species,— yet 
literally covered, season by season, with acorns ? Who has 
not observed that, in our own species, the scrofulous and 
the phthisical have often more numerous families than the 
healthy and the robust ? Now if, in accordance with the 
principles of heredity, the diseased tree or the diseased ani- 
mal reproduces its like, we have here a case of waste. The 
young trees or the young animals sprung from such parentage 
will perhaps — and this is the best case— not reach maturity. 
In the struggle between species and species, or between in- 
dividual and individual, they are soon trodden down, and are 
in the meantime simply an encumbrance. The food they 
consume and the space they occupy might have served a 
better purpose. And circumstances may sometimes make 
them a more important obstacle than their intrinsic powers 
might seem to warrant. An acorn of the miserable little 
oak tree we have been picturing may perchance fall into 
good unoccupied soil, whilst the fruit of the “ Major-,” the 
“ Shambles-,” or the “ Parliament-” oak in “ merrie Sher- 
woode ” may be devoured by squirrels or be carried off to 
feed swine. 
Not merely the progeny of the debilitated, but every ani- 
mal and plant which fails to reach maturity, may be said to 
be an instance of waste. Especially is this the case in the 
human species. The world would be immensely the 
wealthier, as well as the happier, if all those multitudes of 
children who die before reaching maturity had never been 
born, and if the cost of their nurture and education could 
have been capitalised. 
We turn now to a very different region. The importance 
of combined nitrogen- — as distinct from free gaseous nitro- 
gen — is beyond all dispute. It is a most important part of 
the food of plants, without which their growth, or indeed 
their life, is utterly impossible. From plants it is transferred 
to the animals which diredtly or indiredftly feed upon them, 
and forms a most essential constituent of their blood, their 
flesh, their eggs, &c. In short, we may say that without 
combined nitrogen life — as it exists in this world— is simply 
impossible. Further, the stock of combined nitrogen present 
elsewhere than in plants and animals is by no means 
