674 ^^^^ POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the " technic " of a man-like Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due 

 to natural selection. Those that distinguish themselves by vividly 

 contrasting colors from the surrounding green leaves are most readily 

 seen, most frequently visited by insects, most often fertilized, and 

 hence most favored by natural selection. Colored berries also readily 

 attract the attention of birds and beasts, which feed upon them, and 

 spread their manured seeds abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs pos- 

 sessing such berries a greater chance in tlie struggle for existence. 



With profound analytic and synthetic skill, Mr. Darwin investi- 

 gates the cell-making instinct of the hive-bee. His method of deal- 

 ing with it is representative. He falls back from the more perfectly 

 to tlie less perfectly developed instinct — from the hive-bee to the hum- 

 ble-bee, which uses its own cocoon as a comb, and to classes of bees 

 of intermediate skill, endeavoring to show how the passage might be 

 gradually made from the lowest to the highest. The saving of wax is 

 the most important point in the economy of bees. Twelve to fifteen 

 pounds of dry sugar are said to be needed for the secretion of a single 

 pound of wax. The quantities of nectar necessary for the wax must 

 therefore be vast; and every improvement of constructive instinct 

 which results in the saving of wax is a direct profit to the insect's life. 

 The time that would otherwise be devoted to the making of wax is 

 now devoted to the gathering and storing of honey for winter food. 

 He passes from the humble-bee, with its rude cells, through the Meli- 

 pona with its more artistic cells, to the hive-bee with its astonishing 

 architecture. The bees place themselves at equal distances apart upon 

 the wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the selected points. 

 The spheres intersect, and the planes of intersection are built up with 

 thin laminae. Hexagonal cells are thus formed. This mode of treating 

 such questions is, as I have said, representative. He habitually retires 

 from the more perfect and complex, to the less perfect and simple, 

 carries you with him through stages of perfecting, adds increment to 

 increment of infinitesimal change, and in this way gradually breaks 

 down your reluctance to admit that the exquisite climax of the whole 

 could be a result of natural selection. 



Mr. Darwin shirks no difficulty ; and, saturated as the subject was 

 with his own thought, he must have known, better than his critics, 

 the weakness as well as the strength of his theory. This, of course, 

 would be of little avail were his object a temporary dialectic victory 

 instead of the establishment of a truth which he means to be ever- 

 lasting. But he takes no pains to disguise the weakness he has dis- 

 cerned ; nay, he takes every pains to bring it into the strongest light. 

 His vast resources enable him to cope with objections started by him- 

 self and others, so as to leave the final impression upon the reader's 

 mind that if they be not completely answered they certainly are not 

 fatal. Their negative force being thus destroyed, you are free to be 

 influenced by the vast positive mass of evidence he is able to bring 



