BEAUTY, HOW ACQUIRED. 183 



the sting should so often cause the insect's own death : for 

 if on the whole the power of stinging be useful to the social 

 community, it will fulfil all the requirements of natural 

 selection, though it may cause the death of some few mem- 

 bers. 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 purpose, 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 to destroy the young queens, her 

 daughters, as soon as they are 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 principles of natural selection. If we admire 

 the several ingenious contrivances by which orchids and 

 many other plants are fertilized through insect agency, can 

 we consider as equally perfect the elaboration of dense 

 clouds of pollen by our fir-trees, so that a few granules 

 may be wafted by chance on to the ovules ? 



summary: the law of unity of type and of the con- 

 ditions OF EXISTENCE EMBRACED BY THE THEORY OF 

 NATURAL SELECTION. 



We have in this chapter discussed some of the difficulties 

 and objections which may be urged against the theory. 

 Many of them are serious ; but I think that in the discussion 

 light has been thrown on several facts, which on the belief 

 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 

 natural selection is always very slow, and at any one time 

 acts only on a few forms ; and partly because the very pro- 

 cess of natural selection implies the continual supplanting 

 and extinction of preceding and intermediate gradations. 

 Closely allied species, now living on a continuous area, 

 must often have been formed when the area was not con- 

 tinuous, and when the conditions of life did not insensi- 

 bly graduate away from one part to another. When two 

 varieties are formed in two districts of a continuous area, 



