opportunities of studying the animal world in the wide
uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East Russia; and it is
impossible to study like regions without being brought to the
same ideas. I recollect myself the impression produced upon me by
the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in
the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff
was. We both were under the fresh impression of the Origin of
Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between
animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin's work
had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the
remarks of the third chapter (p. 54). We saw plenty of
adaptations for struggling, very often in common, against the
adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and
Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of
carnivores, ruminants, and rodents in their geographical
distribution; we witnessed numbers of facts of mutual support,
especially during the migrations of birds and ruminants; but even
in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in
abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher
animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice,
though I eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears
in the works of most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains
why Kessler's ideas were so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists,
whilst like ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of Darwin
in Western Europe.

The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying
the struggle for existence under both its aspects--direct and
metaphorical--is the abundance of facts of mutual aid, not only
for rearing progeny, as recognized by most evolutionists, but