Yet the method of rapid multiplication was not readily or speedily
abandoned by Nature. Still speaking in our human way, we may say that
she tried to give it every chance. Among insects that have advanced so
far as the white ants, we find that the queen lays eggs at an enormous
rate during the whole of her active life, according to some estimates
at the rate of 80,000 a day. Even in the more primitive members of the
great vertebrate group, to which we ourselves belong, reproduction is
sometimes still on almost as vast a scale as among lower organisms.
Thus, among herrings, nearly 70,000 eggs have been found in a single
female; but the herring, nevertheless, does not tend to increase in the
seas, for it is everywhere preyed upon by whales and seals and sharks
and birds, and, not least, by man. Thus early we see the connection
between a high death-rate and a high birth-rate.
The evidence against reckless reproduction at last, however, proved
overwhelming. With whatever hesitation, Nature finally decided, once
and for all, that it was better, from every point of view, to produce a
few superior beings than a vast number of inferior beings. For while
the primary end of Nature may be said to be reproduction, there is a
secondary end of scarcely less equal urgency, and that is evolution. In
other words, while Nature seems to our human eyes to be seeking after
quantity, she is also seeking, and with ever greater eagerness, after
quality.
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