104 DARWINISM TO-DAY. 



these microscopic differences, for we do not know all the complex 

 interrelation and interaction of the organism and its environment.' 

 We do not, but we do know for many cases that such differences 

 are actually not of life-and-death selective value, and reason 

 compels us to believe to a moral certainty that in other cases these 

 fortuitous trivialities have similar lack of life-and-death importance. 

 The case of the variation of the convergent lady-bird beetle, Hip- 

 podamia convergent (p. 275 et seq.), is distinctly in point. In our 

 account of this variation we have called attention to the suggestive- 

 ness, in its light on the rigour of the 'struggle for existence' among 

 individuals, of the fact that among several thousand individuals, 

 gathered together to hibernate after an active life, having been 

 exposed to the attacks of bird and insect enemies, to the rigours 

 of climatic conditions and to the necessities of obtaining food 

 (other smaller insects, as aphids, etc., caught alive), such a range 

 of variation in pattern is found as enables us to describe (so that 

 they may be actually readily distinguished by verbal description), 

 eighty-four 'aberrations' or pattern-variates ; lady-birds with no 

 spots, with one, with two, with three, with each of all the numbers 

 up to and including eighteen distinct small black spots, the different 

 numbers usually being represented by several different combinations 

 of spots. Systematic entomologists describe Hippodamia convergent 

 as a brown-red beetle with six black spots on each elytron, and this 

 description is true for most beetles of this species. But not at all 

 for all ; nor even approximately for many. After a season of ex- 

 posure to the struggle for existence, to the rigours of selection, 

 individuals with one spot, with six spots, with twelve spots, with 

 eighteen, find themselves alive and healthy ; they come together 

 to pass a quiet winter under the fallen oak leaves on a mountain 

 side, ready to mate miscellaneously in the spring, and produce young 

 of all manner of pattern (as far as number and arrangement of 

 spots go) ; which young, whether twelve-spotted as they ought to 

 be, or no-spotted, or eighteen-spotted as they may be, will appa- 

 rently go safely through life despite the malevolent search of the 

 all-powerful Inquisitor, Rigour of Selection ! 



"Directly touching this point, too, are our data of the variation 

 of series of honey-bees collected from free-flying individuals after 

 exposure as adults to the rigours of outdoor life, as compared with 

 the variation in the series of bees, adult, but collected just as issu- 

 ing from the cells before being exposed as adults in any way to- 

 the external dangers of living. Series of both drones and workers 

 representing both exposed and unexposed individuals were studied. 

 The results of this examination are, put in one statement, that the 

 variation among the exposed individuals is no less than that among 



