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Show 64 HIGH RATE OF INCREASE. CHAP. III. be now increasi.n g, more or 1e ss rapi'd ly' in numbers, all cannot do so for the world would not hold them. . There is ~o exception to the rule that evethryto~gfaniCt beina naturally I. ncreases at so hI'g h a rate ' a I no dest~oyed, the earth would soon be c~vered by ~e ~ro\~n~ of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man as hou ecd in twenty-five years, an d a t this r ate' in . a few t ousan. uld l't ally not be standing room for hiS years, there wo I er 'f 1 progeny. LI.n nreus has calculated that I. an 1an nua d d 1 two seeds-and there IS no p ant so Plant pro uce on Y . unpro du c tI.v e as this-and their seedlings next year puroll-duce d two, and so On ' then in twent.y years there wo c b e a mi.1 1w. n p1 a nt s · The elephant IS reckoned to be the s1 o wes t b ree d er of all known animals, an. d. I have taken some pai.n s t o esti'mate its probable minimum rate of nat ura1 I. ncr ease ·. I·t will be under the mark to assum. e that it breeds when thirty years old, and goes ~n breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth three pair of young in this interval; if this be so, at the ~~d of the fifth century there would be ali:e fifteen milhon elephants, descended from the first pau. . . But we have better evidence on this subJ ect than mere theoretical calculations, namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when circumstances have been favourable to them during two or three following seasons. Still more strikin~ is the ~vidence from our domestic animals of many kinds whiCh have run wild in several parts of the world : if the statements of the rate of increase of slow-breeding cattle and horses in South-America, and latterly in Australia, had ~ot been well authenticated, they would have been. quito incredible. So it is with plants: cases could be g1ven of introduced plants which have become common throughout whole islands in a period of less than ten years. Several \ CIIAP. III. HIGH RATE OF INCREASE. 65 of the plants now most numerous over the wide plains of La Plata, clothing square leagues of surface almost to the exclusion of all other plants, have been introduced from Europe ; and there are plants which now range in India, as I hear from Dr. Falconer, from Cape Comorin to the I-Iimalaya, which have been imported from America since its discovery. In such cases, and endless instances could be given, no one supposes that the fertility of these animals or plants has been suddenly and temporarily increased in any sensible degree. The obvious explanation is that the conditions of life have been very favourable, and that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and young, and that nearly all the young have been enabled to breed. In such cases the geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains the extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion of naturalised productions in their new homes. In a state of nature almost every plant produces seed, and amongst animals there are very few which do not annually pair. Hence we may confidently assert, that all plants and animals are tending to increase at a geo~ metrical ratio, that all would most rapidly stock every station in which they could any how exist, and that the geometrical tendency to increase must be checked by destruction at some period of life. Our familiarity with the larger domestic animals tends, I think, to mislead us : we see no great destruction falling on them, and we forget that thousands are annually slaughtered for food, and that in a state of nature an equal number would have somehow to be disposed of. The only difference between organisms which annually produce eggs or seeds by the thousand, and those which produce extremely few, is, that the slow-breeders would require a few more years to people, under favourable |
