IF EVERYTHING BORN LIVED.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 14206, 3 September 1919, Page 3

IF EVERYTHING BORN LIVED.

I SUPPOSING NATURE HAD HER I FUNG, (' . | During the mouse plague in South ? Australia and Victoria in 1916-17, a | farmer one night put down poisoned wheat, and in the morning 23,000 of the little pests laj dead round his house. There was still greater in a certain wheat-yard, where no fewer than 70,000 mice were killed in a single afternoon. In a short time, indeed, the slain were numbered by billions. Now, if a slight disarrangement of the usual order of things could produce so stupendous an increase in species, wrhat would happen if for a brief period any organism multiplied absolutely unchecked? asks a -writer in “Tit-Bits.’-COUNTLESS MIGHTY FAMILIES. We know as an historical fact that 12,000,000 black cattle on the Argentine pampas at the end of the eighteenth century—to say nothing of countless additional flocks in other parts of South America—were all descendants of a few pairs which Columbus left at St. Domingo on his second voyage. But this gives us merely a faint inkling of the potential rate of reproduction of a species. Suppose that our rat population on January Ist was 40,000,000 —a very moderate estimate —that the sexes were equally divided, and that fifty per cent, had no chance of multiplying. This leaves 10,000,000 pairs, and if only five per cent, of these should have had six litters of eight rats in each by the end of December (this is well within the bounds of possibility), wo shall then have 41,000,000 pairs, or, in all, 82,000,000 rats. Suppose, again, that a pair of elephants live for the normal term of their existence —a century—and that they bring forth and rear only six young, their descendants in 750 years might number nearly 19,000,000. Look now at one of the smallest forms of life—the infusoria. Under the most favourable conditions, a single speciment of these —an organism so tiny that it cannot be seen with the naked eye —will, at a temperature of fifty degrees become two in 24 hours; and if the temperature be increased to 80 dej grecs, the process of multiplication will be repeated five times in 24 hours. Now, if this rate continued for seven and a half days, there would bo a progeny of fifty-eight billions, weighing 2301b! Glance next at the insect world. One fly of a certain species will produce 20,000 larvae, which attain maturity in five days. As each larva remains in a pupal state for five CYOry parou*-_ ily increase*} tOJI tb* aaandfold in two weeks aL the outside. So that during hj short summer of three months its family may total one hundred millions of millions of millions! ONE OYSTER—SIXTEEN MILLION EGGS! Fish, shell and other, will furnish a further illustration. A healthy vigorous specimen of our dear—very dear —old Mcndj the oyster, will produce sixteen million eggs, and its grown-up familymay easily number half a million. Assuming, however, that a female produced sixteen million eggs which developed into oysters, and that these lived the allotted span (whatever that may be in the case of oysters), and then died, each leaving, in turn, a family of sixteen millions, how many would there be in the fifth generation? That is an easy one. The number would be (taking one-half of each generation as females) exactly 66.000.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.000! And what about the shells which the departed w r ould leave behind them as their only memorials? Well, according to Professor Marshall, they -would make a pile eight times as large as the earth! So, again, of many common varieties of the finny race—cod, herring, etc. Such denizens of the deep will produce at least one million eggs, and a pair may have a progeny of many millions. If all of these developed, and each had the average family, the sea would in a very short time become a solid mass of fish, and from it every other form of life would be excluded. Any organism, indeed, if it increased at its natural rate, without let or hindrance, would in a short period cover the whole surface of the globe.. So that if Nature had her fling in a particular direction there would be only one form of life, and that form would be allpowerful.