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Show 202 DIFFICULTIES ON THEORY. CHAP. VI. and animals introduced from Europe. Natural selection will not produce absolute perfection, n?r d? we always meet, as far as we can judge, with this high st~ndard under nature. The correction for the aberration of light is said, ~n high authority, not to be perfect even in that most perfect organ, the .eye. If ou~ reason leads us to admire with 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we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera ?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 origin-ally 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 intensi· :fied, 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 indus· trious 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 CHAP. VI. SUMMARY . 203 young queens her dau ht perish herself in the cog be~s as soon as born, or to for the good of the m a.; for undoubtedly this is commun1ty . d maternal hatred, though th 1 ' an maternal love or · e atter fort t 1 . rare~ IS all the same t th . una e y Is most natural selection. If w o d e. Inexorable principle of contrivances by which teh aflmrre the several ingenious ' e owers of th hi many other plants are fertilised thr e. ore s and of can we consider as equall er£ ough Insect agency, our fir-trees of dense cloufs ~f ect the. elaboration by few granules may be wafted b pollen, In order that a the ovules ? Y a chance breeze on to Summary of Ohapter.-W e ha . . cussed some of the difficult' dve m this chapter dis-h 1es an obie t' . e urged against my th J c Ions which may grave; but I think that :l :any .of them are very thrown on several facts hi eh scussion light has been pendent acts of creatio; a;e ~tt o~ t~ theory of indeseen that species at an e: yo scure. We have variable, and are not r:t rn~ period are not indefinitely of intermediate gradatio~ e :fgether by a multitude natural selection w ·u I s, par y because the process of at any one time o~ a ways be very slow, and will act because the ve;y pry on a vfery few forms; and partly' . li ocess o natur 1 1 . nnp es the continual s I . a se ection almost ceding and intermediat~pp anti~g and extinction of precies, now living on a gt~adations. Closely allied spe-b een formed whe thc on Inuous are a, must often have when the conditio:s o; li~:e~;as n?t co~tinuous, and away from one p t t not msensibly graduate are l~O rmed in two adr. t o. ta nother. Whe n two varieties te rmedi.a te variet Is .n c s of a con tm' uous area, an in-intermediate y bwill often be formed fitted ~or zone . ut fr ' ll an mediate variety will usua om r~as?ns assigned, the inter-lly exist m lesser numbers than |