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angler fish which has been estimated to produce as many as 1,345,000 in a 
season. All the caviare eaten in the world would not keep the sturgeon 
down to normal unless the eggs were destroyed in some other way. From 
a cod weighing less than 12 pounds there were counted nearly 2,000,000 
eggs. If they were all to mature it would not be long before we could 
walk across to Europe on codfish. But other fish and the sea birds are tae 
ruthless agents in keeping the cod within bounds. That the cod sometime 
operates on the control end is proved by the fact that at different times 
there have been taken from cod stomachs a black guillemot, a hare and a 
partridge. The lobster will produce anywhere from 5,000 to 70,000 young 
in a season. Before the shells on the young harden they float to the 
surface, where they are preyed upon by sea birds, fish, and cn occasion by 
their own parents, and thus are regulated by the ruthiess control of nature. 
The mammals and the birds cannot compete with most of nature’s other 
families in the number of progeny, but undoubtedly a far greater proportion 
of them mature. But, let us see what might happen if the familiar robin 
of your lawn were to be exempt from these restraints. A pair of robins 
often will raise three broods of four young in a year. Suppose these mate 
with those in your neighbor’s tree and the next year there are 14 pairs, each 
raising 12 young, the third year 182 pairs, and before long you would be 
wading knee-deep in robins. Fortunately they are not exempt, and they 
and all other birds and mammals have their roles as assistant executioners 
in keeping the balance in nature. 
The theory that the food supply of mankind would control world 
population was brought forward in 1798, a century and a half ago, by 
Thomas Robert Malthus when he wrote: “Since population is capable of 
doubling itself at least once in every twenty-five years, and since the supply 
of food can increase in only arithmetical ratio, it naturally follows that 
increase of population must always be checked by lack of food.” And again 
later: “Want of food is certainly the most efficient of the three immediate 
checks to population. Population soon increases after war and disease and 
convulsions of nature, because the food supply is more adequate for the 
diminished numbers; but where food is deficient no increase of population 
can occur.” <A recently published study along this same line of thought, 
Our Plundered Planet, by Fairfield Osborn, states that, of the eight acres 
per capita of the earth’s surface that are habitable, only about two acres 
are suitable for cultivation. When we realize that it requires the produce 
of from two to three acres to maintain each person it is easier to under- 
stand the low standard of living in many of the lands with long histories 
of occupation and low ratios of land to population. An estimated increase 
of births over deaths of around 50,000 per day makes one wonder how long 
it will be before the natural law of food supply will become a serious 
world question. 
Sufficient and suitable food would seem in the last analysis to be the 
greatest factor in keeping the balance in nature. If, by any chance, any 
species is not kept in check by normal means, usually disease or predation 
of some kind, it will increase until its food supply is inadequate and 
