69 
weaker or less healthy sisters.* Strength on the one hand, 
and precocity on the other, are wedded together. Now, it 
is supposed that by this means the most vigorous adults 
produce the most vigorous offspring of the year. The 
evidence quoted in support of this view goes to show that 
the first brood is stronger than the second, but it does 
not necessarily follow from this that the offspring of a 
less precocious female will not be as vigorous as the off 
spring of those who are the first to wake to the dream 
of love. But we will suppose, for the sake of argument, 
that it is so—that the earliest broods are the strongest and 
the best in every way. Then it may be well to take note 
that it is just these broods which are liable to be destroyed 
through the agency of a fickle and uncertain climate. The 
love-making of the North-American grouse commences 
habitually before the snow has completely disappeared. 
This affords no difficulty if there is no return of wintry 
weather; but a few days of exceptional warmth are sometimes 
followed by a return of cold northern blasts, accompanied 
by snow. The result is fatal to the already hatched chicks, 
and no less to the as yet unhatched eggs ; so much so, 
that in one season there were three or four coveys of quail 
within a radius of sixty miles, where thousands had been 
the year before. Maternal solicitude avails nothing in such 
a catastrophe, as is brought home to us most pathetically 
by the story of the frozen bird found sitting on her frozen 
eggs.f 
Where the destruction is not so universal, where only 
the most precocious suffer, it is obvious that if there is any 
force in the argument for their superiority, a treacherous 
spring may bring about not the survival, but the destruction, 
of the best and fittest. 
* Darwin. Descent of Man. p. 213. 
t The Nineteenth Century, vol. xxxiii., pp. 601-2.