The Origin of Species 



Flowers and fruit have been rendered conspicu- 

 ous by brilliant colours in contrast with the green 

 foliage, in order that the flowers may be easily 

 seen, visited and fertilized by insects, and the 

 seeds disseminated by birds. How it comes that 

 certain colours, sounds and forms should give 

 pleasure to man and the lower animals, that is, 

 how the sense of beauty in its simplest form was 

 first acquired, we do not know any more than how 

 certain odours and flavours were first rendered 

 agreeable. 



As natural selection acts by competition, it 

 adopts and improves the inhabitants of each 

 country only in relation to their co-inhabitants; 

 so that we need feel no surprise at the species of 

 any one country, although on the ordinary view 

 supposed to have been created and specially 

 adapted for that country, being beaten and sup- 

 planted by the naturalized productions from 

 another land. Nor ought we 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 

 ichneumonidas feeding within the living bodies of 

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