2SS THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



worms (Lampyris), Strepsiptera, etc. This partial or com- 

 plete degeneration of the wings of insects has evidently 

 arisen from natural selection in the struggle for life. For 

 we find insects without wings living under circumstances 

 where flying would be useless, or even decidedly injurious 

 to them. If, for example, insects living on islands fly about 

 much, it may easily happen that when flying they are blown 

 into the sea by the wind, and if (as is always the case) 

 the power of flying is differently developed in different 

 individuals, then those which fly badly have an advantage 

 over those which fly well ; they are less easily blown into 

 the sea, and remain longer in life than the individuals of the 

 same species which fly well. In the course of many 

 generations, by the action of natural selection, this cir- 

 cumstance must necessarily leads to a complete suppression 

 of the wings. If this conclusion had been arrived at on 

 purely theoretical grounds, we might be pleased to find its 

 truth established by facts. For upon isolated islands the 

 proportion of wingless insects to those possessing wings is 

 surprisingly large, much larger than among the insects 

 inhabiting continents. Thus, for example, according to 

 Wollaston, of the 550 species of beetles which inhabit the 

 island of Madeira, 220 are wingless, or possess such imperfect 

 wings that they can no longer fly ; and of the 29 genera 

 which belong to that island exclusively, no less than 23 con- 

 tain such species only. It is evident that this remarkable 

 circumstance does not need to be explained by the special 

 wisdom of the Creator, but is sufficiently accounted for by 

 natural selection, because in this case the hereditary disuse 

 of the wings, the discontinuance of flying in the presence 

 of dangerous winds, has been very advantageous in the 



