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 means of existence cannot be made to