424 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



created and specially adapted for that country, being beaten and 

 supplanted by the naturalized productions from another land. Nor 

 ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far 

 as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the 

 human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. 

 We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an 

 enemy, causing the bee's own death; at drones being produced in 

 such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered 

 by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our 

 fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen bee for her own 

 fertile daughters ; at ichneumonidae feeding within the living bodies 

 of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder, indeed, is, on 

 the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of 

 absolute perfection have not been detected. 



The complex and little known laws governing the production of 

 varieties are the same, as far as we can judge, with the laws which 

 have governed the production of distinct species. In both cases 

 physical conditions seem to have produced some direct and definite 

 effect, but how much we cannot say. Thus, when varieties enter 

 any new station, they occasionally assume some of the characters 

 proper to the species of that station. With both varieties and 

 species, use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable 

 effect; for it is impossible to resist this conclusion when we look, 

 for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which has wings in- 

 capable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the domestic 

 duck; or when we look at the borrowing tucu-tucu, which is oc- 

 casionally blind, and then at certain moles, which are habitually 

 blind and have their eyes covered with skin; or when we look at 

 the blind animals inhabiting the dark caves of America and 

 Europe. With varieties and species, correlated variation seems to 

 have played an important part, so that when one part has been 

 modified other parts have been necessarily modified. With both 

 varieties and species, reversions to long-lost characters occasion- 

 ally occur. How inexplicable on the theory of creation is the oc- 

 casional appearance of stripes on the shoulders and legs of the 

 several species of the horse-genus and of their hybrids! How 

 simply is this fact explained if we believe that these species are 

 all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same manner as 

 the several domestic breeds of the pigeon are descended from the 

 blue and barred rock-pigeon ! 



On the ordinary view of each species having been independently 

 created, why should specific characters, or those by which the 



