THE EVOLUTION OF A MOTHER. 275 



that the power to identify their young is all but absent 

 until the higher animals appear. 



The next work of Nature, therefore, was to make 

 the young resemble the parent, to make, in short, the 

 children presentable at birth. And the means taken 

 to effect this are worth noting. Nature always makes 

 her changes with a marvellous economy, and generally, 

 as in this case, with a quite startling simplicity. To 

 start making a new kind of embryo, a plan obvious to 

 us, was not thought of. That would have been to 

 have lost all the time spent on them already. If 

 Nature begins a thing and wishes to make a change, 

 she never goes back to the beginning and starts de 

 novo. Her respect for her own work is profound. To 

 begin at the beginning again would not only be lost 

 work, but waste of future time ; and Evolution, slow 

 as it may seem, never fails to take the quickest path. 

 She did not then start making new embryos. She did 

 not even touch up the old embryos. All that she did 

 was to keep them hidden till they grew more present- 

 able. She left them exactly as they were, only she 

 drew a veil over them. Instead of saying " Let us re- 

 create these little things," she passed the word "Let us 

 delay them till they are fair to see." And from the 

 day that word was passed, the embryos were hindered 

 in the eggs, and the eggs were hindered in the nest, 

 and the young were hindered in the body, retained in 

 the dark for weeks and months, so that when first 

 they caught the Mother's eye they were " strong and 

 of a good liking." 



Though in no case in higher Nature is the young an 

 exact reproduction of its parent, it will be admitted 

 that the likeness is very much greater than among 



