It is not presenting an altogether true picture of Nature to dwell too much upon the savage warfare that is eternally taking place amongst animals and plants on this planet. There is another principle at work in the great drama of life and evolution. This has been called "Mutual Aid" and is thoroughly and ably discussed by Kropotkin in his work published under this title as long ago as 1902. He gives the credit for first calling attention to the principle to the zoologist Kessler, who enunciated it as a law of Nature in a lecture delivered before a Congress of Russian Naturalists in 1880. He propounded the theory that this law of mutual aid, for success in the struggle for life and especially for the progressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the laws of mutual contest There can be no doubt about this in the case of man's evolution and upward climb to his position of supremacy amongst living creatures, It was man's ability or capacity, or whatever one likes to call it, to combine with his fellows to avert dangers that beset him or to overcome obstacles that ce fronted him—that is, his adoption of the pri ciple of mutual aid—which gave him this supremacy. But man is by no means the only creature on -this earth that has benefitted by mutual aid. This occurs all through Nature. We see it operating amongst the animals and birds which form into herds, packs or flocks. Amongst the grass-eaters, such as horses, oxen, sheep, antelopes, deer and the like, the herding instinct is undoubtedly for better protection against a common enemy, the flesh-eaters. Amongst such flesh-eaters as the wolf and the wild dog packs are formed the better to run down and capture large fleet-footed prey, with which it would be beyond the power of a single individual wolf or wild dog, or even a pair, to deal, Birds, such as wild geese and bustards, are safer in flocks than when feeding alone, because it means that, with so many pairs of eyes busy, a better watch for an approaching enemy may be kept. But this is not all. There are a large number of cases in which animals of widely different types enter into a mutual benefit partnership. One of the most extraordinary of these may be witnessed by anyone who keeps an aquarium in which has been placed a few pairs of the little fish found in our Shanghai creeks and called the bitterling, as well as some common fresh water mussels, When the breeding season comes on the female bitterlings will be seen to develop long ovipositors, which they insert into the gills of!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.