THE Ar.CHETYPAL AX ANCESTHAL FORM. 



151 



the sand-wasps and true wasps a constant and accelerating like- 

 ness to the bee form. Yet this continuity of improving organi- 

 zations is often broken, and we often see insects which recall 

 the earlier and more elementary forms. 



Agaic, going back of the larval period, and studying the in- 

 sect in the egg, we find that nearly all the insects yet observed 

 agree most strikingly in their mode of growth, so that, for 

 instance, the earlier stages of the germ of a bee, fly or beetle, 

 bear a remarkable resemblance to each other, and suggest again, 

 more forcibly than when we examine the larval condition, that 

 a common design or pattern at first pervades all. In the light 

 of the studies of Von Baer, of Lamai-ck and Darwin, should we 

 be content to stop here, or does tliis ideal archetype become 

 endowed with life and 

 have a definite exis- 

 tence, becoming the 

 ancestral form of all 

 insects, the pi'ototype 

 which gave birth to 

 tlie hundreds of thou- 

 sands of insect forms 

 which are now spread 

 over our globe, just 

 as we see daily hap- 

 pens where a single 

 aphis may become the ^^*- ^^^1« Stylops. 



progenitor of a million oflfspring clustering on the same tree? 

 Is there not something more than analogy in the two things, and 

 is not the same life-giving force that evolves a million young 

 Aphides from the germ stock of a single Aphis in a single sea- 

 son, the same in kind with the production of the living races 

 of insects from a primeval ancestor? When we see the Aphis 

 giving origin in one season to successive generations, the indi- 

 viduals of which may be counted by the million, it is no less 

 mysterious than that other succession of forms of insect life 

 which has peopled the globe during the successive chapters of 

 its history. While we see in one case the origin of individual 

 forms, and cannot explain what it is that starts the life in the 

 germ and so unerringly guides the course of the growing em- 

 bryo, it is illogical to deny that the same life-giving force is 

 concerned in the production of specific and generic forms. 



