Excerpt from The American Gyn?cological and Obstetrical Journal, Vol. 13: July December, 1898
"While a large mammal bears but a single young one at a time, is several years before it commences doing this, and then repeats the reproduction at long intervals; we find, as we descend to the smaller members of the class, a very early commencement of breeding, an increasing number at birth, reaching in small rodents ten or even more, and a much more frequent recurrence of broods: the combined result being a relatively prodigious fertility. If a specific comparison be desired between mammals that are similar in constitution, in food, in conditions of life, and all other things but size, the deer tribe supplies it. While the large red deer has but one at a birth, the small roe deer has two at a birth."
From vegetable life: "For some years it [the cocoanut] goes on shooting up without making any sign of becoming fertile. About the sixth year it flowers; but the flowers wither without result. In the seventh year it flowers and produces a few nuts; but these prove abortive and drop. In the eighth year it ripens a moderate number of nuts; and afterward increases the number until, in the tenth year, it comes into to full bearing. Meanwhile from the time of its first flowering its growth begins to diminish, and goes on diminishing till the tenth year, when it ceases. Here we see the antagonism between growth and sexual genesis under both its aspects - see a struggle between self-evolution and race-evolution, in which the first for a time overcomes the last, and the last ultimately overcomes the first. The continued aggrandizement of the parent individual makes abortive for two seasons the tendency to produce new individuals, becoming more decided, stops any further aggrandizement of the parent individual."
With reference to the antagonism between expenditure and genesis, the following extracts are illustrative: "The sand-martin, much the least of them [the swallow tribe], has usually six eggs; the swallow, somewhat larger, has four or five; and the swift, larger still has but two. Here we see a lower fertility associated in part with greater size, but associated still more conspicuously with greater expenditure. For the difference in fertility is more than proportionate to the difference of bulk, as shown in other cases; and for this difference there is the reason: that the swift has to support not only the cost of propelling its larger mass through the air, but also the cost of propelling it at a higher velocity."
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