90 
It is obvious from this passage that the theory demands 
the strictest competition ; it excludes the least kind of 
co-operation. Dr. Weismann has taken an illustration, 
which will enable us to test the truth of the theory. 
If birds and beasts of prey lived in flocks and herds, 
and yet acted on the principle of utter selfishness, each 
bird would do what the different vessels of a fleet engaged 
in the seal fishery are said to have done. The process is 
graphically described by Mr. Nansen in his work, Across 
Greenland. 
“ The first thing, of course, is to find the seal, and this is often 
a difficult task, for it must not be supposed that they are at all 
generally distributed over the ice. The sealers often have to search 
for weeks, skirting the edge of the ice-fields and examining every bay 
or inlet which admits of a passage in. The glasses are in constant 
use in the crow’s-nest on the maintop. Then, if after long search 
signs of seal are at last discovered far away among the floes, and the 
ice does not lie too close to make a passage possible, the engines 
are at once put to their highest speed. The one object is now to 
push in and anticipate one’s competitors. Just as at the card-table 
there is no fellowship, so among the sealers of the Arctic seas 
altruism is a virtue unknown. Every ship does its best to outwit 
its fellows, and nothing brings so much satisfaction as the success of 
an ingenious trick. So if there happen to be several vessels in one’s 
neighbourhood when one discovers seal, and there is reason to believe 
that the others are still in ignorance of the find, the first thing is 
to entice the others away and set off in pursuit alone. To gain this 
object recourse is had to the most extraordinary stratagems. To 
steam off at full speed in quite a different direction, as if one already 
saw, or expected to see, seal in that quarter, so draw the others off, 
and then a while afterwards sneak back and start off to make one’s 
capture alone, is an artifice in daily use at these times”—(Vol.. /., 
PP- 174-5) 
This, however, does not seem to be the way in which 
flocks and herds conduct themselves. The white-tailed 
eagle of the Russian steppes pursues a method in which 
the principle of co-operation is conspicuous, the quicker 
vision of one securing the advantage of all.