enthusiasm a multitude of inimitable contrivances in nature, this same
reason tells us, though we may easily err on both sides, that some
other contrivances are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the
wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking
animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so
inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?
If we look at the sting of the bee, as having originally existed in a
remote progenitor as a boring and serrated instrument, like that in so
many members of the same great order, and which has been modified but
not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally
adapted to cause galls subsequently intensified, we can perhaps
understand how it is that the use of the sting should so often cause
the insect s own death: for if on the whole the power of stinging be
useful to the community, it will fulfil all the requirements of natural
selection, though it may cause the death of some few members. If we
admire the truly wonderful power of scent by which the males of many
insects find their females, can we admire the production for this
single purpose of thousands of drones, which are utterly useless to the
community for any other end, and which are ultimately slaughtered by
their industrious and sterile sisters? It may be difficult, but we
ought to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which
urges her instantly to destroy the
young queens her daughters as soon as born, or to perish herself in the
combat; for undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; and
maternal love or maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most
rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural selection.
If we admire the several ingenious contrivances, by which the flowers
of the orchis and of many other plants are fertilised through insect
agency, can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration by our
fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen, in order that a few granules may
be wafted by a chance breeze on to the ovules?
_Summary of Chapter_. We have in this chapter discussed some of the
difficulties and objections which may be urged against my theory. Many
of them are very grave; but I think that in the discussion light has
been thrown on several facts, which on the theory of independent acts
of creation are utterly obscure. We have seen that species at any one
period are not indefinitely variable, and are not linked together by a
multitude of intermediate gradations, partly because the process of
156