TENACITY OF LIFE IN WILD ANIMALS. GO 
% 
defence of her free children, hut wars upon them when they 
have deserted her banners, and tamely submitted to the 
dominion of man.* 
Not only is the wild plant much hardier than the domes¬ 
ticated vegetable, but the same law prevails in animated brute 
and even human life. The beasts of the chase are more capa¬ 
ble of endurance and privation and more tenacious of life, than 
the domesticated animals which most nearly resemble them. 
The savage fights on, after he has received half a dozen mortal 
wounds, the least of which would have instantly paralyzed the 
strength of his civilized enemy, and, like the wild boar,f he 
has been known to press forward along the shaft of the spear 
which was transpiercing his vitals, and to deal a deathblow on 
the soldier who wielded it. 
True, domesticated plants can be gradually acclimatized to 
bear a degree of heat or of cold, which, in their wild state, 
they would not have supported; the trained English racer 
outstrips the swiftest horse of the pampas or prairies, perhaps 
even the less systematically educated courser of the Arab ; the 
strength of the European, as tested by the dynamometer, is 
greater than that of the New Zealander. But all these are 
instances of excessive development of particular capacities and 
faculties at the expense of general vital power. Expose 
untamed and domesticated forms of life, together, to an entire 
set of physical conditions equally alien to the former habits of 
both, so that every power of resistance and accommodation 
shall be called into action, and the wild plant or animal will 
live, while the domesticated will perish. 
The saline atmosphere of the sea is specially injurious both 
to seeds and to very many young plants, and it is only recently 
* Tempests, violent enough to destroy all cultivated plants, often spare 
those of spontaneous growth. During the present summer, I have seen in 
Northern Italy, vineyards, maize fields, mulberry and fruit trees completely 
stripped of their foliage by hail, while the forest trees scattered through 
the meadows, and the shrubs and brambles which sprang up by the way- 
side, passed through the ordeal with scarcely the loss of a leaflet. 
t The boar spear is provided with a short crossbar, to enable the 
hunter to keep the infuriated animal at bay after he has transfixed him. 
