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males and females flourished,' we are told, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members!'

Surely this is the most marvellous of all the marvels which we have yet met with: fertile parents transmit through fertile progeny, a tendency to produce sterile members of society! Thus, then, sterility springs from fertility! and, because parents and children are fertile, therefore, and as a consequence, their grandchildren are sterile! Such is the logic of the theory.

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But again a slight modification of structure or instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, has been advantageous to the community,' these gentle words carry with them a world of meaning, and yet they are so quietly introduced, that they might almost be supposed to express well-known facts which no one disputed. A slight modification of structure or instinct,' not only begs the whole question, but takes for granted that to change the structure or the instinct of an animal is as easy with them, as for us to change our shoes and stockings. Changing a structure is in fact a work of new creation, and changing an instinct is a feat never accomplished except in a fairy tale, if even a fairy tale has ever registered such an event. Perhaps in Mr Thackeray's History of the Ring and the Rose something like this is recorded, but that can scarcely be considered authority for the facts of Natural History.

These transformations, slowly working out by fertility producing sterility, were 'for the benefit of the community.' Certain members of the community' perceived this, and so they agreed to have sterile grandchildren, and thus on this public principle was the society at last established on

a solid basis. The one female who was left fertile, whilst thousands and tens of thousands around her had become sterile, concentrated in her person the esteem and respect of the whole society, and thus has Natural Selection consolidated the Realm of Bees.'

Having thus given us the authentic history of bees, Mr Darwin goes on to the ants.

'But we have not as yet touched the climax of the difficulty; namely, the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or three castes' (260). Details are then given of these striking differences, and in one case we have it described thus: "The difference between them is the same as if we were to see a set of workmen building a house, of whom many were five feet high, and many sixteen feet high-but we must further suppose, that the larger workmen had heads four times as big as those of the smaller ren, and jaws nearly five times as big.' Here, indeed, is difference enough, but it is no obstacle to the theory, as we see by the following words: 'It will, indeed, be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the principle of Natural Selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well-established facts at once annihilate my theory. In this case we may safely conclude from the analogy of ordinary variations, that each successive, slight, profitable modification, did not probably at first appear in all the neuters in the same nest, but in a few alone! and that by the long-continued selection of the fertile parents which produced most neuters with the profitable modification, all the neuters ultimately came to have the desired character' (261).

Surely we have an instance in this passage of the manner in which the author habitually deceives himself. We hear of the principle of Natural Selection,' when, in fact, it is no principle at all, but simply 'the sequence of events' according to the author's definition of the words. Let us, then, here again substitute the definition for the metaphor. 'It will be thought I have an overweening confidence in the Sequence of Events '-if put thus, the illusion vanishes, and the cloud of words is dissipated.

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Here, however, the author personifies his metaphor more determinately than usual. 'The long-continued selection of the fertile parents:' who selects them? Natural Selection and what is Natural Selection? the Sequence of Events as observed by us. But by continual speaking of Natural Selection in this way, by constantly personifying the metaphor, the author presents it to us, and that repeatedly, as if it were an intelligent breeder of animals, exercising a clear judgment, and skilfully contriving to take advantage of every circumstance that might favour the object it had in view. A phantom of words sustains a character, and a figurative expression is turned into an omnipotent workman.

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But why need Mr Darwin trouble himself about a climax of difficulty.' How can there be any climax in such a system as this? The theory that educes animated nature from the spore of a sea-weed, and that works in the tail of a fish for all sorts of purposes,' till it becomes the tail of a giraffe or a monkey; that turns swim-bladders into lungs, and branchiæ into wings, with many more such marvels, need not find a difficulty in any proposition. Natural Selection can do anything which the imagination can possibly suggest. It has brought fishes out of

the water to become terrestrial animals, and has sent bears to live in the sea. Delphinum silvis adpingit, fluctibus ur

sum.

There can be, therefore, no climax of difficulty for this thaumaturgic Metaphor.

CHAPTER VII.

NATURAL SELECTION IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE

HONEY-BEE.

THE received opinion of all ages as to the principle of Instinct is in direct opposition with the dogmas of the theory. What that theory teaches us on this subject we have now seen ; and, as the aim of it is to get rid of the idea of a preordaining wisdom, arranging beforehand certain habits of life for animals, either in a social or a solitary condition, and adapting their organization for their pre-determined habits, here it is we take our stand, and boldly affirm that instinct is the result of pre-ordaining wisdom, and that certain creatures act in a certain way for their own benefit, not because the Sequence of Events has brought them to act in that way, but because they have been brought into existence so to act, and have no alternative but to act as they do.

Certain species have appeared on the scene for a certain object, and without their will or power of altering the arrangement, certain germs of life derived from themselves are developed, which inherit the qualities, faculties, and dispositions of the species, handing down to all ages the unalterable traditions of their race.

No animal can escape from the instinct of its species,

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