A Dig at the Evolutionists 



allowing the wise eclecticism of your ances- 

 tress, whose relics now repose in the hard 

 mud of some lacustrian stratum, to become 

 obsolete ! How much better would things 

 be for you and yours ! Abundance is as- 

 sured; painful and often fruitless searches 

 are avoided; the larder is crammed without 

 being subject to the accidents of time, place 

 and climate. When Ephlpplgers run short, 

 you fall back upon Crickets; when there 

 are no Crickets, you capture Grasshoppers. 

 But no, my beautiful Sphex-wasps, you 

 were not such fools as that. If in our 

 days you are each confined to a standing 

 family-dish, it is because your ancestress of 

 the lacustrian schists never taught you va- 

 riety. 



Could she have taught you uniformity? 

 Let us suppose that the Sphex of antiquity, 

 a novice in the gastronomic art, prepared her 

 potted meats with a single kind of game, no 

 matter what. It was then her descendants 

 who, subdivided into groups and consti- 

 tuted into so many distinct species by the 

 slow travail of the centuries, realized that 

 in addition to the ancestral fare there ex- 

 isted a host of other foods. Tradition be- 

 ing abandoned, there was nothing to guide 

 their choice. They therefore tried a bit of 



211 



