The Mason-bees 



when away from home. Whether this sense 

 be magnetic or no I will not take upon myself 

 to decide; I am content to have helped, in no 

 small degree, to establish its existence. A new 

 sense added to our number: what an acquisi- 

 tion, what a source of progress ! Why are 

 we deprived of it? It would have been a 

 fine weapon and of great service in the strug- 

 gle for life. If, as is contended, the whole 

 of the animal kingdom, including man, is de- 

 rived from a single mould, the original cell, 

 and becomes self-evolved in the course of 

 time, favouring the best-endowed and leaving 

 the less well-endowed to perish, how comes it 

 that this wonderful sense is the portion of a 

 humble few and that it has left no trace in 

 man, the culminating achievement of the zoo- 

 logical progression? Our precursors were 

 very Ill-advised to let so magnificent an in- 

 heritance go : It was better worth keeping than 

 a vertebra of the coccyx or a hair of the 

 moustache. 



Does not the fact that this sense has not 



been handed down to us point to a flaw in 



the pedigree? I submit the little problem to 



the evolutionists; and I should much like to 



128 



