OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF DESCENT. 325 



their females, can we admire the production for this sin- 

 gle purpose of thousands of drones, which are utterly use- 

 less 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 fortu- 

 nately is most rare, is all the same to the inexorable prin- 

 ciple of natural selection. If we admire the several ingen- 

 ious 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 ? 



INSTINCTS AS A DIFFICULTY. 



OrLrin of Many instincts are so wonderful that their 



Species, development will probably appear to the read- 

 pa ° c er a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole 



theory. I may here premise that I have nothing to do 

 with the origin of the mental powers, any more than I 

 have with that of life itself. We are concerned only with 

 the diversities of instinct and of the other mental facul- 

 ties in animals of the same class. 



I will not attempt any definition of instinct. It 

 would be easy to show that several distinct mental actions 

 are commonly embraced by this term ; but every one un- 

 derstands what is meant when it is said that instinct 

 impels the cuckoo to migrate and to lay her eggs in other 

 birds' nests. An action, which we ourselves require ex- 



