DARWINISM. 25 



by this law, we see that fertility itself is a character 

 which will be selected as tending to the preservation of 

 a species, and that many creatures must have acquired 

 the power of what looks like wasteful reproduction in 

 the long-continued struggle for existence. We can see, 

 too, how in that same struggle, it may have proved ex- 

 pedient for a creature to be armed with a weapon capable 

 of inspiring terror, yet so contrived that its possessor 

 should, of necessity, be peaceful towards its neighbours. 

 True, this might have been done by a single act of 

 creation, but why, then, was it not done also in the case 

 of the mosquito, the wasp, and the hornet ? 



On the theory of sudden creation, how can we account 

 in any but an arbitrary manner, for the innumerable 

 cases in which slight differences separate various species; 

 for the confused neutral ground between different classes, 

 as where, for example, a creature seems half animal half 

 plant ; for the isolation of many forms from the stations 

 they are admirably fitted to occupy; for the fact that 

 many creatures are hideous, weak, timid, violent, and 

 venomous; for the imperfection of an instinct in one 

 species found perfected in another, which Mr. Darwin 

 exemplifies by comparing the cells of the humble-bee, 

 the melipona domestica of Mexico, and the hive-bee, 

 ranging from great simplicity to an extreme perfection T ? 



1 ' Origin of Species,' p. 270. Mr. Darwin shows how the hexagonal 

 cells of the hive-bee can have arisen from the simple cylindrical form, 

 by bringing the cylinders sufficiently near together, so that their out- 

 lines, if completed, would intersect. 



The humble-bee makes separate and very irregular rounded cells. 



The melipona domestica makes cells that are nearly spherical, but 



