Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-02-06
"On Board the
Good Ship Earth"
By Herbert Quick
Multiply and RepIenish the Earth
By Herbert Quick

IS Iouhu almost all over the earth
though Ii Increases more slowly than
many other plants. it lives a thou
sand years. The smaller wheat
plant If given space and plant foo6.
would spread all over the surface of
the earth. while the oak was getting
ready to bear its first acorn-but the
wheat plant does not occupy more of
the decks Of the Good Shin Earth
than the oak, for all that--or would
not If left unaided in the struggle.
Both increase to the limits which
their food and their enemies will
allow.
That green rash which breaks out
all over the decks of our Good Shin
Earth called vegetation is then COM
posed of an innumerable host of war
crowd the other out. The flttest sur
vive. Some produce innumerable
seeds, and trust to chance for the
planting thereof. Some live by
ithorns. Some stick their seeds fast
to animals. Some produce good fruit
with hard seeds inside so that birds
and animals win scatter them. The
ones with the most successful tricks
survive.
So with animals. Each multiplies
to the limits allowed by its food sup
ply. and its diseases and its enemies
There are always other animals
whose existence and multiplication
are at the expense of the animal in
question. There are pests and para
sites. And there is the question of
getting food. If food is plenty. and
enemies are scare. and diseases and
pests are absent, the animal increases
whether it be giraffe or dodo or
sparrow. If the food is scare, or the
| enemies successful. or the diseases
and pests bad. the race decreases.
There is always a tide in the affairs
OF animals and plants as in those of
| men-it either Gibbs or flows. Some
times it GIBBS until a race is wiped
out-like the fossil animals we read
of and see in the museums. the dodo
| just spoken of, and the passenger
pigeon which many people now living
! have seen, but which is no more. This
| ebbing and flowing of the racial tide
| is called a moving equilibrium. IT
! is like the tug of war when two
sides pull at rope-eaeh side is al
ways losing-or gaining-until one
definitely wins
Enemies keep the race from in
creasing-that is war.
| Pests and diseases prey on the race
and keep down it's numbers-that is
| pestilence
! Food supply grows too small for
the multiplied hosts and they starve-
| that is famine.
War, pestilence, faminel These are
the genii with which nature keeps her
balance even between the warning
! species of both plants and animals.
/ Without war, pestilence and famine
there is not one species which would
not eventually ruthlessly crowd every
thing else off the earth. driven as they
all are by the irresistible urge to null
| tiply.
But man is an animals he exempt
from the rule? Did God place him on
this huge, round Zeppelin of the skies,
and decree that he, too, must multiply
until the Good Ship Earth can no
| longer nourish him, and therefore un-
less he is decimated by war, he shall
fall by the sickle of pestilence and IL
he escapes war and pestilence, that
poverty must destroy him by famine?
us this the thing the Lord God made,
i and gave
| To have dominion over, land and
! sea-"
| And is this the sort of dominion He
gave?
/ See tomorrows Evening Star for
! announcement of the next article in
| this great series.