Some Wayside Problems 57 



venient facts should be taken and inconvenient facts 

 left, and that hypotheses should therefore be held as 

 proved which we have taken no real step towards 

 demonstrating, and that whilst we are priding ourselves 

 on having sounded the bottom of all knowledge, we 

 should in reality be all the time, like Newton, children 

 on the sea-shore picking up a shell or a pebble here and 

 there, while the limitless ocean with all its treasures rolls 

 before us unexplored. 



It may be said that the facts I have instanced and 

 others like them must admit of some explanation, and 

 that the arguments here used would, in some cases at 

 least, appear to suggest that no explanation is possible. 

 What, for instance, about the self-immolation of moths 

 and other insects when they see a light? But such 

 examples tell only against any blind operation of merely 

 mechanical laws. Once admit a design in the processes 

 of nature, and there is no phenomenon but may well be 

 part of that design. Not only the propagation of a 

 species, but its confinement within suitable limits, or 

 even its extinction in favour of other forms, may be in 

 the plan of the Designer. "Foumarts," 1 said a veteran 

 north-country gamekeeper, "are the clumsiest things 

 about a trap. They'll go into anything, a box or a cage, 

 it doesn't matter; and they'll walk on to a trap that's 

 hardly tried to be hidden : they seem never to look 

 under their feet." Clearly this gives them no great 

 assistance towards multiplication but their multiplica- 

 tion may possibly not be intended. 



So too their cousins the weasels are cursed with a 

 curiosity which goes far to neutralize the benefit of the 

 proverbial fact that they are not to be caught asleep. 

 If one escapes the gunner by reaching the security of a 

 hole, his enemy has only to wait patiently in sight of it, 

 and he will not have to wait long. Infallibly the 

 creature will pop out its head again to have a look at 

 the stranger, and in so doing will give the stranger a 

 sight in return. 



1 Polecats. 



