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 square miles--the ) dry surface of the earth x ) 27,878,400--the number of ) = sq. ft. 1,421,798,400,000,000 sq. ft. in 1 sq. mile ) --------------------- 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 increase in the same ratio, that there must come a time when the number of organic beings will be in excess of the power of production of nutriment, and that thus some check must arise to the further increase of those organic beings. At the end of the ninth year we have seen that each plant would not be able to get its full square foot of ground, and at the end of another year it would have to share that space with fifty others the produce of the seeds which it would give off.