i So Scientific Sophisms. 



quite in the dark also as to the mode in which 

 natural selection sets to work in the multiplying 

 of air-sacs, or in the boring of bones, to increase 

 the facilities for flotation and flight. But he 

 devotes a large portion of a chapter on Instinct, 

 otherwise extremely graceful and interesting, 

 to a hypothetical exposition of the processes 

 by which the common hive-bee, Apis mdlifica, 

 might have distanced her less skilful kindred 

 Melipona and Bombus ; and how the wonderful 

 phenomena of sexual suppression and vicarious 

 labour might have arisen among the social in- 

 stincts of the bee and ant tribes generally. "No 

 one, since Touchstone's time, has set such store 

 on the virtues, or so taxed the capacities, of an 

 If. A certain abstract theorem conceded, if 

 Bombus or Melipona could be brought to put 

 that theorem in practice, one huge stumbling- 

 block would be removed from Mr. Darwin's 

 speculative path. But this is the hitch. It is 

 as much out of the question for Bombus or 

 Melipona, not being a man, to see with Mr. 

 Darwin's eyes, as it would be for Mr. Darwin, 

 not being a bee, to work with Melipona's tools. 

 Slight deflexions of habit, artificially provoked, 

 in the more highly endowed insect, do not 

 furnish the smallest presumption of the genesis 

 of new endowments in its inferior sisterhood. 



