Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/49

II the parents is killed; while they offer a defenceless prey to jackdaws, jays, and magpies, and not a few are ejected from their nests by their foster-brothers the cuckoos. As soon as they are fledged and begin to leave the nest great numbers are destroyed by buzzards, sparrow-hawks, and shrikes. Of those which migrate in autumn a considerable proportion are probably lost at sea or otherwise destroyed before they reach a place of safety; while those which remain with us are greatly thinned by cold and starvation during severe winters. Exactly the same thing goes on with every species of wild animal and plant from the lowest to the highest. All breed at such a rate, that in a few years the progeny of any one species would, if allowed to increase unchecked, alone monopolise the land; but all alike are kept within bounds by various destructive agencies, so that, though the numbers of each may fluctuate, they can never permanently increase except at the expense of some others, which must proportionately decrease.

As the facts now stated are the very foundation of the theory we are considering, and the enormous increase and perpetual destruction continually going on require to be kept ever present in the mind, some direct evidence of actual cases of increase must be adduced. That even the larger animals, which breed comparatively slowly, increase enormously when placed under favourable conditions in new countries, is shown by the rapid spread of cattle and horses in America. Columbus, in his second voyage, left a few black cattle at St. Domingo, and these ran wild and increased so much that, twenty-seven years afterwards, herds of from 4000 to 8000 head were not uncommon. Cattle were afterwards taken from this island to Mexico and to other parts of America, and in 1587, sixty-five years after the conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards exported 64,350 hides from that country and 35,444 from St. Domingo, an indication of the vast numbers of these animals which must then have existed there, since those captured and killed could have been only a small portion of the whole. In the pampas of Buenos Ayres there were, at the end of the last century, about twelve million cows and three million horses, besides great numbers in all other parts