superabundant supply of self-reliant animals, have one flank and the rear exposed, and it is precisely these whom the lions take.  Looking at the matter in a broad way, we may justly assert that wild beasts trim and prune every herd into compactness, and tend to reduce it into a closely-united body with a single well-protected leader.  That the development of independence of character in cattle is thus suppressed below its otherwise natural standard by the influence of wild beasts, is shown by the greater display of self-reliance among cattle whose ancestry for some generations have not been exposed to such danger.

What has been said about cattle, in relation to wild beasts, applies with more or less obvious modifications to barbarians in relation to their neighbours, but I insist on a close resemblance in the particular circumstance, that many savages are so unamiable and morose as to have hardly any object in associating together, besides that of mutual support.  If we look at the inhabitants of the very same country as the oxen I have described, we shall find them congregated into multitudes of tribes, all more or less at war with one another.  We shall find that few of these tribes are very small, and few very large, and that it is precisely those that are exceptionally large or small whose condition is the least stable.  A very small tribe is sure to be overthrown, slaughtered, or driven into slavery by its more powerful neighbour.  A very large tribe falls to pieces through its own unwieldiness, because, by the nature of things, it must be either deficient in centralisation or straitened in food, or both.  A barbarian population is obliged to live dispersedly, since a square mile of land will support only a few hunters or shepherds; on the other hand, a barbarian government cannot be long maintained unless the chief is brought into frequent contact with his dependants, and this is geographically impossible when his tribe is so scattered as to cover a great extent of territory.  The law of selection must discourage every race of barbarians which supplies self-reliant individuals in such large numbers as to cause tribes of moderate size to lose their blind desire of aggregation.  It must equally discourage a breed that is incompetent to supply such men in sufficiently abundant ratio to the rest of the population to ensure the existence of tribes of not too large a size.  It must not be supposed that gregarious instincts are equally important to all forms of savage life; but I hold, from what we know of the clannish fighting habits of our forefathers, that they were every whit as applicable to the earlier ancestors of our European stock as they are still to a large part of the black population of Africa.