Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Peter Kropotkin
1902
Chapter 2
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
(continued)
Migrations of birds.-- Breeding associations. -- Autumn
societies. -- Mammals: small number of unsociable species. --
Hunting associations of wolves, lions, etc. -- Societies of
rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. -- Mutual Aid in the struggle
for life. -- Darwin's arguments to prove the struggle for life
within the species. -- Natural checks to over-multiplication. --
Supposed extermination of intermediate links. -- Elimination of
competition in Nature.
As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads
and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions
of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of
vigour and joy, hasten northwards to rear their offspring. Each
of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the
lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and
Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the
tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy,
and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble
and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of
the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its
shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at
least a score of different species, all living in perfect
peace-all protecting one another.
"For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with
gulls and terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands
of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their.
food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost
each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the
flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms
everywhere."1
And here are the robbers -- the strongest, the most cunning
ones, those "ideally organized for robbery." And you hear their
hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they watch
the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one
single unprotected individual. But as soon as they approach,
their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and
hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by
hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he
suddenly dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all
sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he
falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds
rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne;
they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a
cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a
kite.2 And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the
robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion,
or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time
the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life,
the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of
that life.
Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes,
"you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the
ledges, all the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to a
height of from two to five hundred feet, literally covered with
sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if
the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near
and far, is, so to say, full with fowls."3
Each of such "bird-mountains" is a living illustration of mutual
aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual
and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is
renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge
is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader
of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades
belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird;
but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the
commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the
dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls,
among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar
guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist
she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade;
and, by her side, another female who adopts any one's orphans,
and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she
conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by
side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have
the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and
touching" that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a
female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among
which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs)
several females hatch together in the same, nest. or the lums,
which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself,
offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to
the highest: and that is why she cannot be depicted by any
sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the
moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist are
themselves a result -- mostly unconscious -- of the observation
of Nature.4
Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds
that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned
with groups of crows' nests; our hedges are full of nests of
smaller birds; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of
swallows; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal
birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming
descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all
these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the
weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent
observer, Dr. Couës, saw, for instance, the little cliff-swallows
nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of the prairie falcon
(Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of one of
the minarets of clay which are so common in the cañons of
Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The
little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour;
they never let it approach to their colony. They immediately
surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at
once.5
Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is
over; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in
societies of youngsters, generally including several species.
Social life is practised at that time chiefly for its own sake --
partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures derived from
it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young
nuthatchers (Sitta caesia), together with tit-mouses,
chaffinches, wrens, tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.6 In
Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels,
fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of America the
young horned larks live in large societies, together with another
lark (Sprague's), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several
species of buntings and longspurs.7 In fact, it would be much
easier to describe the species which live isolated than to simply
name those species which join the autumnal societies of young
birds -- not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy
life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports,
after having given a few hours every day to find their daily
food.
And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid
among birds-their migrations -- which I dare not even enter upon
in this place. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for
months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in
thousands; they come together at a given place, for several days
in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the
particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every
afternoon in flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait
for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain
well chosen direction -- a fruit of accumulated collective
experience -- the strongest flying at the head of the band, and
relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas
in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when
they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in
most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest
which it had built or repaired the previous year.8
This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied; it
offers so many striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits,
subsidiary to the main fact of migration -- each of which would,
however, require a special study -- that I must refrain from
entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer to
the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place,
always on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys
north or south, as also those which one sees in the north, after
the birds have arrived at their breeding-places on the Yenisei or
in the northern counties of England. For many days in succession
-- sometimes one month -- they will come together every morning
for one hour, before flying in search of food -- perhaps
discussing the spot where they are going to build their
nests.9 And if, during the migration, their columns are
overtaken by a storm, birds of the most different species will be
brought together by common misfortune. The birds which are not
exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and southwards with
the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So far
from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate
individual the advantages of better food or shelter which are to
be found in another district -- they always wait for each other,
and gather in flocks, before they move north or south, in
accordance with the season.10
Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us
is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over
those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the
Alpine tracts, and the Steppes of the Old and New World are
stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer,
buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable
animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found
it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop
their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross
the route they followed; the march past of the dense column
lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians
took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with
deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the
very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedition
which lasted for two hundred years; while the grass plains of
Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra,
the hartebeest, and other antelopes.
Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and
Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to
the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia.
The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered
with countless colonies of mice, ground-squirrels, marmots, and
other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the
forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants,
rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far
north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still
further north we find the herds of the musk-oxen and numberless
bands of polar foxes. The coasts of the ocean are enlivened by
flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals of sociable
cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central
Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and
wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations
sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals,
although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we
find but the débris of the immense aggregations of old. How
trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the
carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who
speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but
lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of
their victims! One might as well imagine that the whole of human
life is nothing but a succession of war massacres.
Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find
social habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the
cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the
members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are
but seldom met with even in small groups. And yet, even among
lions "this is a very common practice to hunt in company."11
The two tribes of the civets (Viverridae) and the weasels
(Mustelidae) might also be characterized by their isolated life,
but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel
was more sociable than it is now; it was seen then in larger
groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland.
As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and
association for hunting purposes may be considered as eminently
characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in
fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left
an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle,
surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then,
suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the
abyss.12 Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador
wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his
cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of
wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human
settlements, as was the case in France some five-and-forty years
ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses
otherwise than in packs; and yet they have to sustain bitter
fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl's testimony)
sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the
wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being
surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs. The
prairie-wolves (Canis latrans) are known to associate in bands of
from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo
occasionally separated from its herd.13 Jackals, which are
most courageous and may be considered as one of the most
intelligent representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in
packs; thus united, they have no fear of the bigger
carnivores.14 As to the wild dogs of Asia (the Kholzuns, or
Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger
animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and overpowering bears
and tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs,
and the hunting organizations of the painted lycaons are highly
praised by Cumming. Nay, even foxes, which, as a rule, live
isolated in our civilized countries, have been seen combining for
hunting purposes.15 As to the polar fox, it is -- or rather
was in Steller's time -- one of the most sociable animals; and
when one reads Steller's description of the war that was waged by
Behring's unfortunate crew against these intelligent small
animals, one does not know what to wonder at most: the
extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the mutual aid they
displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or stored
upon a pillar (one fox would climb on its top and throw the food
to its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to
despair by the numerous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in
societies where they are not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw
the black bear of Kamtchatka in numerous packs, and the polar
bears are occasionally found in small groups. Even the
unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain
association.16
However, it is especially with the rodents, the ungulata, and
the ruminants that we find a highly developed practice of mutual
aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of
them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own
provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm
found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the
two broods of the same year can join together with their parents
in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social
relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a
close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the
forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black
squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart
from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their
lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too
rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous
as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the
forests, the fields, and the gardens; while foxes, polecats,
falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns
and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The
ground-squirrel -- a closely-akin genus -- is still more
sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its
subterranean halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts,
usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some
observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet
it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and
Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter,
found several individuals in the same apartment; they must have
stored it with common efforts.
The large tribe, of the marmots, which includes the three
large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Spermophilus, is still
more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having
each one its own dwelling; but they live in big villages. That
terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia -- the souslik -- of
which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone,
lives in numberless colonies; and while the Russian provincial
assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy
of society, it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful
way. Their play is so charming that no observer could refrain
from paying them a tribute of praise, and from mentioning the
melodious concerts arising from the sharp whistlings of the males
and the melancholic whistlings of the females, before -- suddenly
returning to his citizen's duties -- he begins inventing the most
diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All
kinds of rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved
powerless, the last word of science in this warfare is the
inoculation of cholera! The villages of the prairie-dogs in
America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can
embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them
a prairie-dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its
neighbours by means of short barkings. As soon as the approach of
man is signalled, all plunge in a moment into their dwellings;
all have disappeared as by enchantment. But if the danger is
over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come out
of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch
one another, they worry one another, and display their
gracefulness while standing upright, and in the meantime the old
ones keep watch. They go visiting one another, and the beaten
footpaths which connect all their heaps testify to the frequency
of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have written
some of their best pages in describing the associations of the
prairie-dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the
polar marmots of the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as
regards the marmots, the same remark as I have made when speaking
of the bees. They have maintained their fighting instincts, and
these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their big
associations, in the face of free Nature, the unsociable
instincts have no opportunity to develop, and the general result
is peace and harmony.
Even such harsh animals as the rats, which continually fight
in our cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when
they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their
plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their
invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-rats of Canada, they are
extremely sociable. Audubon could not but admire "their peaceful
communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy
happiness." Like all sociable animals, they are lively and
playful, they easily combine with other species, and they have
attained a very high degree of intellectual development. In their
villages, always disposed on the shores of lakes and rivers, they
take into account the changing level of water; their domeshaped
houses, which are built of beaten clay interwoven with reeds,
have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are
well carpeted at winter time; they are warm, and, nevertheless,
well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known,
with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and
villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of
any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what
mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the
development of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence,
that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me
only remark that with the beavers, the muskrats, and some other
rodents, we already find the feature which will also be
distinctive of human communities -- that is, work in common.
I pass in silence the two large families which include the
jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or
underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents
might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures
derived by animals from social life.17 Precisely, the
pleasures; because it is extremely difficult to say what brings
animals together -- the needs of mutual protection, or simply the
pleasure of feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate,
our common hares, which do not gather in societies for life in
common, and which are not even endowed with intense parental
feelings, cannot live without coming together for play. Dietrich
de Winckell, who is considered to be among the best acquainted
with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate players,
becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known
to take an approaching fox for a playmate.18 As to the rabbit,
it lives in societies, and its family life is entirely built upon
the image of the old patriarchal family; the young ones being
kept in absolute obedience to the father and even the
grandfather.19 And here we have the example of two very
closely-allied species which cannot bear each other -- not
because they live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are
too often explained, but most probably because the passionate,
eminently-individualist hare cannot make friends with that
placid, quiet, and submissive creature, the rabbit. Their tempers
are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship.
Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of
horses, which includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the
zebras, the mustangs, the cimarrones of the Pampas, and the
half-wild horses of Mongolia and Siberia. They all live in
numerous associations made up of many studs, each of which
consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male.
These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly
organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies
and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have
disappeared from the surface of the earth were it not for their
sociable spirit. When a beast of prey approaches them, several
studs unite at once; they repulse the beast and sometimes chase
it: and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can
capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached
from the herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the
prairies, they gather in herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals
strong, and migrate. And when a snow-storm rages in the Steppes,
each stud keeps close together, and repairs to a protected
ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been
seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the
survivors are found after the storm half dying from fatigue.
Union is their chief arm in the struggle for life, and man is
their chief enemy. Before his increasing numbers the ancestors of
our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskii, so named by Polyakoff)
have preferred to retire to the wildest and least accessible
plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they continue to live,
surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the
Arctic regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.20
Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken
from the life of the reindeer, and especially of that large
division of ruminants which might include the roebucks, the
fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex, and, in fact,
the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides, the
Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of
their herds against attacks of carnivores; the anxiety displayed
by all individuals in a herd of chamois as long as all of them
have not cleared a difficult passage over rocky cliffs. the
adoption of orphans; the despair of the gazelle whose mate, or
even comrade of the same sex, has been killed; the plays of the
youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But
perhaps the most striking illustration of mutual support is given
by the occasional migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once
on the Amur. When I crossed the high plateau and its border
ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from Transbaikalia to
Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way
to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow
deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.21 Two years later I
was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the
lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the
Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where
it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of
that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and
thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur where it is
narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in
succession, upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the
Cossacks were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in
which already floated a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed
every day, and the exodus nevertheless continued. Like migrations
were never seen either before or since, and this one must have
been called for by an early and heavy snow-fall in the Great
Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate attempt at
reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains.
Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under
snow two or three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense
territory (almost as big as Great Britain) from which the
scattered groups of deer must have gathered for a migration which
was undertaken under the pressure of exceptional circumstances,
and realizes the difficulties which had to be overcome before all
the deer came to the common idea of crossing the Amur further
south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the
amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The
fact is not the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes
of North America displayed the same powers of combination. One
saw them grazing in great numbers in the plains, but these
numbers were made up by an infinity of small groups which never
mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose, all groups,
however scattered over an immense territory, came together and
made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of
individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page.
I also ought to say a few words at least about the "compound
families" of the elephants, their mutual attachment, their
deliberate ways in posting sentries, and the feelings of sympathy
developed by such a life of close mutual support.22 I might
mention the sociable feelings of those disreputable creatures the
wild boars, and find a word of praise for their powers of
association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.23 The
hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a
work devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might
be given to the sociability and mutual attachment of the seals
and the walruses; and finally, one might mention the most
excellent feelings existing among the sociable cetaceans. But I
have to say yet a few words about the societies of monkeys, which
acquire an additional interest from their being the link which
will bring us to the societies of primitive men.
It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand
at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by
their structure and intelligence, are eminently sociable.
evidently we must be prepared to meet with all varieties of
character and habits in so great a division of the animal kingdom
which includes hundreds of species. But, all things considered,
it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual
protection, and a high development of those feelings which are
the necessary outcome of social life, are characteristic of most
monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones,
sociability is a rule to which we know but a few exceptions. The
nocturnal apes prefer isolated life; the capuchins (Cebus
capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small
families; and the orang-outans have never been seen by A.R.
Wallace otherwise than either solitary or in very small groups of
three or four individuals, while the gorillas seem never to join
in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey tribe -- the
chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons,
and so on -- are sociable in the highest degree. They live in
great bands, and even join with other species than their own.
Most of them become quite unhappy when solitary. The cries of
distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the
whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most
carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack
them. They plunder our fields always in bands -- the old ones
taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little
tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt,
embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their
tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species
display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not
abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have
ascertained that it is dead and that they are helpless to restore
it to life. Thus James Forbes narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a
fact of such resistance in reclaiming from his hunting party the
dead body of a female monkey that one fully understands why "the
witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to
fire at one of the monkey race."24 In some species several
individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search
for ants' eggs under it. The hamadryas not only post sentries,
but have been seen making a chain for the transmission of the
spoil to a safe place; and their courage is well known. Brehm's
description of the regular fight which his caravan had to sustain
before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the
valley of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.25 The
playfulness of the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which
reigns in the families of chimpanzees also are familiar to the
general reader. And if we find among the highest apes two
species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not sociable,
we must remember that both -- limited as they are to very small
areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two
islands of Borneo and Sumatra have all the appearance of being
the last remnants of formerly much more numerous species. The
gorilla at least seems to have been sociable in olden times, if
the apes mentioned in the Periplus really were gorillas.
We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in
societies is no exception in the animal world; it is the rule,
the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with
the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in
small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are
limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few
exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now,
were living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and
waged a permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from
which they formerly derived food. "On ne s'associe pas pour
mourir," was the sound remark of Espinas; and Houzeau, who knew
the animal world of some parts of America when it was not yet
affected by man, wrote to the same effect.
Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of
evolution; and, according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer,
so brilliantly developed in Perrier's Colonies Animales, colonies
are at the very origin of evolution in the animal kingdom. But,
in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution, we see
association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely
physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it
becomes reasoned. With the higher vertebrates it is periodical,
or is resorted to for the satisfaction of a given want --
propagation of the species, migration, hunting, or mutual
defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds associate against
a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of exceptional
circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a
voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination
sometimes appears in two or more degrees -- the family first,
then the group, and finally the association of groups, habitually
scattered, but uniting in case of need, as we saw it with the
bisons and other ruminants. It also takes higher forms,
guaranteeing more independence to the individual without
depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents
the individual has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when
it prefers being left alone; but the dwellings are laid out in
villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all inhabitants the
benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several
species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc., sociable life is
maintained notwithstanding the quarrelsome or otherwise egotistic
inclinations of the isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed,
as is the case with ants and bees, by the very physiological
structure of the individuals; it is cultivated for the benefits
of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of
course, appears with all possible gradations and with the
greatest variety of individual and specific characters -- the
very variety of aspects taken by social life being a consequence,
and for us a further proof, of its generality.26
Sociability -- that is, the need of the animal of associating
with its like -- the love of society for society's sake, combined
with the "joy of life," only now begins to receive due attention
from the zoologists.27 We know at the present time that all
animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and
ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling,
running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing
each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a
school for the proper behaviour of the young in mature life,
there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian purposes,
are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an
excess of forces -- "the joy of life," and a desire to
communicate in some way or another with other individuals of the
same or of other species -- in short, a manifestation of
sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the
animal world.28 Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at
the appearance of a bird of prey, or "a fit of gladness" which
bursts out when the animals are in good health and especially
when young, or merely the desire of giving play to an excess of
impressions and of vital power -- the necessity of communicating
impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the
proximity of other kindred living beings pervades Nature, and is,
as much as any other physiological function, a distinctive
feature of life and impressionability. This need takes a higher
development and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals,
especially amidst their young, and still more among the birds;
but it pervades all Nature, and has been fully observed by the
best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even amongst the ants,
and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together the
big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already.
The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating
the places where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of
course, well known from the pages that Darwin gave to this
subject in The Descent of Man (ch. xiii). Visitors of the London
Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the satin bower-bird.
But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely spread
than was formerly believed, and Mr. W. Hudson gives in his
master-work on La Plata the most interesting description, which
must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by
quite a number of birds: rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on.
The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several
species of birds, belongs to the same category of social
instincts. It is most strikingly developed with the chakar
(Chauna chavarris), to which the English have given the most
unimaginative misnomer of "crested screamer." These birds
sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they
frequently sing all in concert. W.H. Hudson found them once in
countless numbers, ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined
flocks, of about 500 birds in each flock.
"Presently," he writes, "one flock near me began singing, and
continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when
they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the
next, and so on, until once more the notes of the flocks on the
opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water --
then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more
the sound approached me travelling round to my side again."
On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered
with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but
scattered in pairs and small groups. About nine o'clock in the
evening, "suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the
marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous evening
song.... It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to
hear."29 It may be added that like all sociable animals, the
chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man." They
are mild-tempered birds, and very rarely quarrel" -- we are told
-- although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life
in societies renders these weapons useless.
That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the
struggle for life, taken in its widest sense, has been
illustrated by several examples on the foregoing pages, and could
be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if further evidence
were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects,
the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to
protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of
prey; it permits longevity; it enables the species to rear its
progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its
numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate; it enables the gregarious
animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while
fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours,
cunningness, and endurance to hunger and cold, which are
mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the
individual, or the species, the fittest under certain
circumstances, we maintain that under any circumstances
sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life.
Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are
doomed to decay; while those animals which know best how to
combine, have the greatest chances of survival and of further
evolution, although they may be inferior to others in each of the
faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save the intellectual
faculty. The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the
best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty,
while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most
powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most powerful
factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence
is an eminently social faculty. Language, imitation, and
accumulated experience are so many elements of growing
intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived.
Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants,
the parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest
sociability with the highest development of intelligence. The
fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and sociability
appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by
securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the
waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of
intelligence.
Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be
utterly impossible without a corresponding development of social
feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of
justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were
constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others
interfering in favour of the wronged, no society -- life would be
possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all
gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows
or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or
repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the
nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few
sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade;
and it is evident that without such interference being the rule,
no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of
penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing
abodes, and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in
Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to
rest, and from which it never deviates; and so on.30 We have
any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in
the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents,
and the herds of grass-eaters; while, on the other side, we know
of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats
in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the
possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a
limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development
of better moral feelings. The high development of parental love
in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is
generally known. As to the young birds and mammals whom we
continually see associating, sympathy -- not love -- attains a
further development in their associations. Leaving aside the
really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which
have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with
animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well certified
facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty
and L. Büchner have given a number of such facts.31 J.C.
Wood's narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry
away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.32 So
also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah
which is quoted by Darwin; he saw a blind pelican which was fed,
and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be
brought from a distance of thirty miles.33 And when a herd of
vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H.A. Weddell saw more than
once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males
covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to
protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded
comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists.
Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a necessary outcome
of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance
in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step
towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its
turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct,
the question necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent
with the theory of struggle for life as it has been developed by
Darwin, Wallace, and their followers? and I will now briefly
answer this important question. First of all, no naturalist will
doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through
organic nature is the greatest generalization of our century.
Life is struggle; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But
the answers to the questions, "By which arms is this struggle
chiefly carried on?" and "Who are the fittest in the struggle?"
will widely differ according to the importance given to the two
different aspects of the struggle: the direct one, for food and
safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin
described as "metaphorical" -- the struggle, very often
collective, against adverse circumstances. No one will deny that
there is, within each species, a certain amount of real
competition for food -- at least, at certain periods. But the
question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent
admitted by Darwin, or even by Wallace; and whether this
competition has played, in the evolution of the animal kingdom,
the part assigned to it.
The idea which permeates Darwin's work is certainly one of
real competition going on within each animal group for food,
safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks
of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity,
and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of
competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that
competition, we must confess that we do not find them
sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled
"Struggle for Life most severe between Individuals and Varieties
of the same Species," we find in it none of that wealth of proofs
and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever
Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same
species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single
instance: it is taken as granted; and the competition between
closely-allied animal species is illustrated by but five
examples, out of which one, at least (relating to the two species
of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.34 But when we look
for more details in order to ascertain how far the decrease of
one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other
species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us:
"We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe
between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature;
but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species
has been victorious over another in the great battle of life."
As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a
slightly-modified heading ("Struggle for Life between
closely-allied Animals and Plants often most severe"), he makes
the following remark (italics are mine), which gives quite
another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says:
"In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the
two, the stronger killing the weaker. but this is by no means
necessary, and there may be cases in which the weaker species,
physically, may prevail by its power of more rapid
multiplication, its better withstanding vicissitudes of climate,
or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common
enemies."
In such cases what is described as competition may be no
competition at all. One species succumbs, not because it is
exterminated or starved out by the other species, but because it
does not well accommodate itself to new conditions, which the
other does. The term "struggle for life" is again used in its
metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real
competition between individuals of the same species, which is
illustrated in another place by the cattle of South America
during a period of drought, its value is impaired by its being
taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons emigrate in like
circumstances in order to avoid competition. However severe the
struggle between plants -- and this is amply proved -- we cannot
but repeat Wallace's remark to the effect that "plants live where
they can," while animals have, to a great extent, the power of
choice of their abode. So that we again are asking ourselves, To
what extent does competition really exist within each animal
species? Upon what is the assumption based? The same remark must
be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a severe
competition and struggle for life within each species, which may
be derived from the "extermination of transitional varieties," so
often mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time
Darwin was worried by the difficulty which he saw in the absence
of a long chain of intermediate forms between closely-allied
species, and that he found the solution of this difficulty in the
supposed extermination of the intermediate forms.35 However,
an attentive reading of the different chapters in which Darwin
and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the
conclusion that the word "extermination" does not mean real
extermination; the same remark which Darwin made concerning his
expression: "struggle for existence," evidently applies to the
word "extermination" as well. It can by no means be understood in
its direct sense, but must be taken "in its metaphoric sense." If
we start from the supposition that a given area is stocked with
animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for
the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all
the inhabitants -- each animal being compelled to fight against
all its congeners in order to get its daily food -- then the
appearance of a new and successful variety would certainly mean
in many cases (though not always) the appearance of individuals
which are enabled to seize more than their fair share of the
means of existence; and the result would be that those
individuals would starve both the parental form which does not
possess the new variation and the intermediate forms which do not
possess it in the same degree. It may be that at the outset,
Darwin understood the appearance of new varieties under this
aspect; at least, the frequent use of the word "extermination"
conveys such an impression. But both he and Wallace knew Nature
too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only
possible and necessary course of affairs.
If the physical and the biological conditions of a given
area, the extension of the area occupied by a given species, and
the habits of all the members of the latter remained unchanged --
then the sudden appearance of a new variety might mean the
starving out and the extermination of all the individuals which
were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new feature by
which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination of
conditions is precisely what we do not see in Nature. Each
species is continually tending to enlarge its abode; migration to
new abodes is the rule with the slow snail, as with the swift
bird; physical changes are continually going on in every given
area; and new varieties among animals consist in an immense
number of cases-perhaps in the majority -- not in the growth of
new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its
congeners -- food is only one out of a hundred of various
conditions of existence -- but, as Wallace himself shows in a
charming paragraph on the "divergence of characters" (Darwinism,
p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking
to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no
extermination, even no competition -- the new adaptation being a
relief from competition, if it ever existed; and yet there will
be, after a time, an absence of intermediate links, in
consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for
the new conditions -- as surely as under the hypothesis of
extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that
if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin
himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the
species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination
of the intermediate forms.
The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation
of groups of animals, for the origin of new varieties and
ultimately of new species, which was indicated by Moritz Wagner,
was fully recognized by Darwin himself. Consequent researches
have only accentuated the importance of this factor, and they
have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by a given
species -- which Darwin considered with full reason so important
for the appearance of new varieties -- can be combined with the
isolation of parts of the species, in consequence of local
geological changes, or of local barriers. It would be impossible
to enter here into the discussion of this wide question, but a
few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action of these
agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often
take to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when
there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the
fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well-known
physiological effects on the squirrels. If this change of habits
does not last -- if next year the cones are again plentiful in
the dark larch woods -- no new variety of squirrels will
evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area
occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters
altered -- in consequence of, let us say, a milder climate or
desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine
forests in proportion to the larch woods -- and if some other
conditions concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the
outskirts of the desiccating region -- we shall have then a new
variety, i.e. an incipient new species of squirrels, without
there having been anything that would deserve the name of
extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of
squirrels of the new, better adapted variety would survive every
year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time,
without having been starved out by Malthusian competitors. This
is exactly what we see going on during the great physical changes
which are accomplished over large areas in Central Asia, owing to
the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial period.
To take another example, it has been proved by geologists
that the present wild horse (Equus Przewalski) has slowly been
evolved during the later parts of the Tertiary and the Quaternary
period, but that during this succession of ages its ancestors
were not confined to some given, limited area of the globe. They
wandered over both the Old and New World, returning, in all
probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in the
course of their migrations, formerly left.36 Consequently, if
we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between
the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors,
this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been
exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place. No
exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the ancestral
species: the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties
and species have died in the usual course of events -- often
amidst plentiful food, and their remains were buried all over the
globe.
In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and,
carefully re-read what Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we
see that if the word "extermination" be used at all in connection
with transitional varieties, it must be used in its metaphoric
sense. As to "competition," this expression, too, is continually
used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph "On Extinction")
as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the
intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two
portions of the same species for the means of existence. At any
rate, the absence of intermediate forms is no argument in favour
of it.
In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen
competition for the means of existence continually going on
within every animal species is -- to use Professor Geddes'
expression -- the "arithmetical argument" borrowed from Malthus.
But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well
take a number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants
of which enjoy plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation
of any kind; and seeing that for the last eighty years the
birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while the population is now
what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there has
been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the
truth is that from year to year the population remained
stationary, for the simple reason that one-third of the new-born
died before reaching their sixth month of life; one-half died
within the next four years, and out of each hundred born, only
seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went
away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if
such is the case with men, it is still more the case with
animals. In the feathered world the destruction of the eggs goes
on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are the chief food of
several species in the early summer; not to, say a word of the
storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in
America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the
young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat
to a bird's nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away
those competitors which appear so terrible in theory.
As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and
cattle in America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even
of wild animals imported from Europe (where their numbers are
kept down by man, not by competition), they rather seem opposed
to the theory of over-population. If horses and cattle could so
rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved that, however
numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that time in
the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the
prairies could maintain. If millions of intruders have found
plenty of food without starving out the former population of the
prairies, we must rather conclude that the Europeans found a want
of grass-eaters in America, not an excess. And we have good
reasons to believe that want of animal population is the natural
state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary
exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given
region are determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the
region, but by what it is every year under the most unfavourable
conditions. So that, for that reason alone, competition hardly
can be a normal condition. but other causes intervene as well to
cut, down the animal population below even that low standard. If
we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter
through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean
and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted
not because there is not enough food for all of them -- the grass
buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance --
but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the
snow, and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike.
Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and if
several such days come in succession the horses grow still more
exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which compels the already
weakened animals to remain without any food for several days, and
very great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are
so severe that if the season has been more inclement than usual
they are even not repaired by the new breeds -- the more so as
all horses are exhausted, and the young foals are born in a
weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus always
remain beneath what they otherwise might be; all the year round
there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet
their population increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the
Buriate owner makes ever so small a provision of hay in the
steppe, and throws it open during days of glazed frost, or
heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his herd.
Almost all free grass-eating animals and many rodents in Asia and
America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say
that their numbers are not kept down by competition; that at no
time of the year they can struggle for food, and that if they
never reach anything approaching to over-population, the cause is
in the climate, not in competition.
The importance of natural checks to over-multiplication, and
especially their bearing upon the competition hypothesis, seems
never to have been taken into due account The checks, or rather
some of them, are mentioned, but their action is seldom studied
in detail. However, if we compare the action of the natural
checks with that of competition, we must recognize at once that
the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks.
Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged
ants which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or
half-dead bodies of the formica de fuego (Myrmica saevissima)
which had been blown into the river during a gale "were heaped in
a line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing
without interruption for miles at the edge of the water."37
Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might
support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr.
Altum, a German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about
animals injurious to our forests, also gives many facts showing
the immense importance of natural checks. He says, that a
succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the exodus of
the pine-moth (Bombyx pini) destroy it to incredible amounts, and
during the spring of 1871 all these moths disappeared at once,
probably killed by a succession of cold nights.38 Many like
examples relative to various insects could be quoted from various
parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also mentions the bird-enemies of the
pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes;
but he adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it
are a far more terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy
the moth over very large areas at once. As to various species of
mice (Mus sylvaticus, Arvicola arvalis, and A. agrestis), the
same author gives a long list of their enemies, but he remarks:
"However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other
animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every
year." Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in
numberless quantities; "one single sudden change can reduce
thousands of mice to the number of a few individuals." On the
other side, a warm winter, or a winter which gradually steps in,
make them multiply in menacing proportions, notwithstanding every
enemy; such was the case in 1876 and 1877.39 Competition, in
the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when
compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also
given as regards squirrels.
As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden
changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of
bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia; and Ch.
Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed during some exceptionally
severe winters, that they quitted the moors in numbers, "and we
have then known them actually to be taken in the streets of
Sheffield. Persistent wet," he adds, "is almost as fatal to
them."
On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually
visit most animal species destroy them in such numbers that the
losses often cannot be repaired for many years, even with the
most rapidly-multiply ing animals. Thus, some sixty years ago,
the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood of
Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of some
epidemics; and for years no sousliks were seen in that
neighbourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous
as they formerly were.40 Like facts, all tending to reduce the
importance given to competition, could be produced in
numbers.41 Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin's words,
that nevertheless each organic being "at some period of its life,
during some season of the year, during each generation or at
intervals, has to struggle for life and to suffer great
destruction," and that the fittest survive during such periods of
hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of the animal world
were based exclusively, or even chiefly, upon the survival of the
fittest during periods of calamities; if natural selection were
limited in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or
sudden changes of temperature, or inundations, retrogression
would be the rule in the animal world. Those who survive a
famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or
diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are
neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most
intelligent. No progress could be based on those survivals -- the
less so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with an
impaired health, like the Transbaikalian horses just mentioned,
or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of a fortress which has been
compelled to live for a few months on half rations, and comes out
of its experience with a broken health, and subsequently shows a
quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection can do in
times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the
greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among
the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring; they can feed
upon the Polar birch in case of need; they resist cold and
hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the
weight which a European horse carries with ease; no Siberian cow
gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no
natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with
Europeans. They may better endure hunger and cold, but their
physical force is very far below that of a well-fed European, and
their intellectual progress is despairingly slow. "Evil cannot be
productive of good," as Tchernyshevsky wrote in a remarkable
essay upon Darwinism.42
Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the
animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to
exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields
for its activity. Better conditions are created by the
elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual
Support.43 In the great struggle for life -- for the greatest
possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of
energy -- natural selection continually seeks out the ways
precisely for avoiding competition as much as possible. The ants
combine in nests and nations; they pile up their stores, they
rear their cattle -- and thus avoid competition; and natural
selection picks out of the ants' family the species which know
best how to avoid competition, with its unavoidably deleterious
consequences. Most of our birds slowly move southwards as the
winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and undertake
long journeys -- and thus avoid competition. Many rodents fall
asleep when the time comes that competition should set in; while
other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large
villages for obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The
reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the
continent, migrate towards the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense
continent in order to find plenty of food. And the beavers, when
they grow numerous on a river, divide into two parties, and go,
the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and
avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor
migrate, nor lay in stores, nor themselves grow their food like
the ants, they do what the titmouse does, and what Wallace
(Darwinism, ch. v) has so charmingly described: they resort to
new kinds of food -- and thus, again, avoid competition.44
"Don't compete! -- competition is always injurious to the
species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it!" That is
the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always
present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush,
the forest, the river, the ocean. "Therefore combine -- practise
mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to
all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and
progress, bodily, intellectual, and moral." That is what Nature
teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have
attained the highest position in their respective classes have
done. That is also what man -- the most primitive man -- has been
doing; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we
stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to
mutual aid in human societies.
Notes
1 Syevettsoff's Periodical Phenomena, p. 251.
2 Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760.
3 The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjöld, London, 1879, p. 135.
See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda islands by Mr.
Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel.
5 See Appendix III.
5 Elliot Couës, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories,
iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. Among the gulls (Larus argentatus),
Polyakoff saw on a marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting
grounds of a very great number of these birds were always
patrolled by one male, which warned the colony of the approach of
danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the enemy with
great vigour. The females, which had five or six nests together
On each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their
nests in search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are
extremely unprotected and easily become the prey of the rapacious
birds, were never left alone ("Family Habits among the Aquatic
Birds," in Proceedings of the Zool. Section of St. Petersburg
Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874).
6 Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White's
Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI.
7 Dr. Couës, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin U.S.
Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7.
8 It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally
transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the
Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other
side, it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones
for migration. The fact has been noticed several times, and it
was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several
parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on both
sides of their migratory columns (Der zoologische Garten, 1886,
p. 133).
9 H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit.
10 The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with
reference to England several examples may be found in Charles
Dixon's Among the Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches
arrive during winter in vast flocks; and about the same time,
i.e. in November, come flocks of bramblings; redwings also
frequent the same places "in similar large companies," and so on
(pp. 165, 166).
11 S.W. Baker, Wild Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316.
12 Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404.
13 Houzeau's Etudes, ii. 463.
14 For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant's Natural
History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p.
432.
15 See Emil Hüter's letter in L. Büchner's Liebe.
16 See Appendix IV.
17 With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note
that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably
together in each village, but that whole villages visit each
other at nights. Sociability is thus extended to the whole
species -- not only to a given society, or to a nation, as we saw
it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow, and
buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas --
we are told by Hudson -- "come from a distance to dig out those
that are buried alive" (l.c., p. 311). This is a widely-known
fact in La Plata, verified by the author.
18 Handbuch für Jüger und Jagdberechtigte, quoted by Brehm, ii.
223.
19 Buffon's Histoire Naturelle.
20 In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the
quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra,
nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches,
which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several
species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have a case of mutual
dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained
by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together
with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that
hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of
character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit. Cf., among
others, Clive Phillips-Wolley's Big Game Shooting (Badminton
Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various
species living together in East Africa.
21 Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was
prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly
could, was beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in
search of deer. His efforts were not rewarded by even so much as
one fallow deer killed every day; and he was an excellent hunter.
22 According to Samuel W. Baker, elephants combine in larger
groups than the "compound family." "I have frequently observed,"
he wrote, "in the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country,
the tracks of elephants in great numbers which have evidently
been considerable herds that have joined together in a general
retreat from a ground which they considered insecure" (Wild
Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102).
23 Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, l.c.).
24 Romanes's Animal Intelligence, p. 472.
25 Brehm, i. 82; Darwin's Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff
expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern
Thibet a similar fight.
26 The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned
article by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known
sentence of Rousseau: "The first men who substituted mutual peace
for that of mutual war -- whatever the motive which impelled them
to take that step -- created society" (Nineteenth Century, Feb.
1888, p. 165). Society has not been created by man; it is
anterior to man.
27 Such monographs as the chapter on "Music and Dancing in
Nature" which we have in Hudson's Naturalist on the La Plata, and
Carl Gross' Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable
light upon an instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature.
28 Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of
assembling together -- in many cases always at the same spot --
to indulge in antics and dancing performances, but W.H. Hudson's
experience is that nearly all mammals and birds ("probably there
are really no exceptions") indulge frequently in more or less
regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of
sound exclusively (p. 264).
29 For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm.
30 Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia, p. 58.
31 To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried
away by another badger suddenly appearing on the scene; rats have
been seen feeding a blind couple (Seelenleben der Thiere, p. 64
seq.). Brehm himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a
third crow which was wounded; its wound was several weeks old
(Hausfreund, 1874, 715; Büchner's Liebe, 203). Mr. Blyth saw
Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades; and so on.
32 Man and Beast, p. 344.
33 L.H. Morgan, The American Beaver, 1868, p. 272; Descent of
Man, ch. iv.
34 One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of
another swallow species in North America; the recent increase of
the missel-thrush in Scotland has caused the decrease of the
song.thrush; the brown rat has taken the place of the black rat
in Europe; in Russia the small cockroach has everywhere driven
before it its greater congener; and in Australia the imported
hive-bee is rapidly exterminating the small stingless bee. Two
other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned
in the preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts,
A.R. Wallace remarks in a footnote relative to the Scottish
thrushes: "Prof. A. Newton, however, informs me that these
species do not interfere in the way here stated" (Darwinism, p.
34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to its
amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human
dwellings (low cellars, sewers, etc.), as also on the banks of
canals and rivers; it also undertakes distant migrations in
numberless bands. The black rat, on the contrary, prefers staying
in our dwellings themselves, under the floor, as well as in our
stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be
exterminated by man; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to
certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or
starved out by the brown rat and not by man.
35 "But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species
inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the
present time many transitional forms.... By my theory these
allied species are descended from a common parent; and during the
process of modification, each has become adapted to the
conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and
exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional
varieties between its past and present states" (Origin of
Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also p. 137, 296 (all paragraph "On
Extinction").
36 According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special
study of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed
there some time, and returned next to Asia. Whether this double
migration be confirmed or not, the fact of a former extension of
the ancestor of our horse over Asia, Africa, and America is
settled beyond doubt.
37 The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95.
38 Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschädigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel
(Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq.
39 Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187.
40 A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Société des Naturalistes de
Moscou, 1889, p. 625.
41 See Appendix V.
42 Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: "The Theory of Beneficency of
Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on
Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life," by an Old Transformist.
43 "One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection
acts is, by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat
different mode of life, whereby they are able to seize
unappropriated places in Nature" (Origin of Species, p. 145) --
in other words, to avoid competition.
44 See Appendix VI.
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