We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year.
—Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), ch. III, p. 62
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theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks