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Let us now consider a less extreme and more familiar case. We possess a
considerable number of birds which, like the redbreast, sparrow, the
four common titmice, the thrush, and the blackbird, stay with us all the
year round These lay on an average six eggs, but, as several of them
have two or more broods a year, ten will be below the average of the
year's increase. Such birds as these often live from fifteen to twenty
years in confinement, and we cannot suppose them to live shorter lives
in a state of nature, if unmolested; but to avoid possible exaggeration
we will take only ten years as the average duration of their lives. Now,
if we start with a single pair, and these are allowed to live and breed,
unmolested, till they die at the end of ten years,--as they might do if
turned loose into a good-sized island with ample vegetable and insect
food, but no other competing or destructive birds or quadrupeds--their
numbers would amount to more than twenty millions. But we know very well
that our bird population is no greater, on the average, now than it was
ten years ago.


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