thod.
What will be the result, then? I will suppose that every plant requires
one square foot of ground to live upon; and the result will be that,
in the course of nine years, the plant will have occupied every single
available spot in the whole globe! I have chalked upon the blackboard
the figures by which I arrive at the result:--

Plants.
Plants 1 x 50 in 1st year = 50
50 x 50 " 2nd " = 2,500 2,500 x
50 " 3rd " = 125,000 125,000 x 50 " 4th " = 6,250,000 6,250,000 x 50
" 5th " = 312,500,000 312,500,000 x 50 " 6th " = 15,625,000,000
15,625,000,000 x 50 " 7th " = 781,250,000,000 781,250,000,000 x 50 "
8th " = 39,062,500,000,000 39,062,500,000,000 x 50& " 9th " =
1,953,125,000,000,000

51,000,000 sq. miles--the dry surface of the earth x 27,878,400--the
number of sq. ft. in 1 sq. mile = sq. ft. 1,421,798,400,000,000 being
531,326,600,000,000 square feet less than would be required at the end
of the ninth year.

You will see from this that, at the end of the first year the single
plant will have produced fifty more of its kind; by the end of the
second year these will have increased to 2,500; and so on, in succeeding
years, you get beyond even trillions; and I am not at all sure that I
could tell you what the proper arithmetical denomination of the total
number really is; but, at any rate, you will understand the meaning of
all those noughts. Then you see that, at the bottom, I have taken the
51,000,000 of square miles, constituting the surface of the dry land;
and as the number of square feet are placed under and subtracted from
the number of seeds that would be produced in the ninth year, you can
see at once that there would be an immense number more of plants than
there would be square feet of ground for their accommodation. This is
certainly quite enough to prove my point; that between the eighth and
ninth year after being planted the single plant would have stocked the
whole available surface of the earth.

This is a thing which is hardly conceivable--it seems hardly
imaginable--yet it is so. It is indeed simply the law of Malthus
exemplified. Mr. Malthus was a clergyman, who worked out this
subject most minutely and truthfully some years ago; he showed quite
clearly,--and although he was much abused for his conclusions at the
time, they have never yet been disproved and never will be--he showed
that in consequence of the increase in the number of organic beings in
a geometrical ratio, while the