The Three Barriers. 181 



' It may easily be supposed] in these researches, 

 is but a sorry substitute for, 'It has actually 

 been observed' The true tokens of consummate 

 geometrical' prescience can never be simulated 

 by tentative effort Had Mr. Darwin lived two 

 thousand years ago, his ceral experiments might 

 have furnished a target for the shafts of Aristo- 

 phanes; 1 but, indifferent alike to savant and 

 satirist, Melipona was then building her cells 

 no better, and Mellifica no worse. Those ex- 

 planations of the mystery of cell-making which 

 really explain nothing are, however, moderation 

 itself to the inimitable though unconscious 

 legerdemain which converts an unanswerable and 

 unblunted objection to our author's favourite 

 solvent, drawn from the phenomena of insect 

 sterility and caste, into the occasion of a pane- 

 gyric on its power. It is his business^ prove 

 that natural selection has done certain wonderful 

 things : See, he virtually says, what wonderful 

 things, far beyond my own expectation, natural 

 selection can do? A more flagrant intrusion 

 of unpruned fancy into a domain sacred to the 

 severities of observation can scarcely be con- 

 ceived. 



"The social insects, like those lower in the 



i " Clouds," 147-153. 



" Origin of Species," p. 242. 



