92 How Theories are Manufactured 



ballad of our childhood, neither more nor less : 1 it is 

 an evolution of Darwinian fancy, not a sober record of 

 observed fact. Such are the feats which we are able to 

 perform in the fields of science, who have the good luck 

 to live " since the great principle of descent with modifi- 

 cation has reduced the science of life from chaos to 

 rational order ; " we who " can now answer confidently : 

 Such and such a plant is what it is in virtue of such and 

 such ancestral conditions, and it has been altered thus 

 and thus by these and those variations in habit or en- 

 vironment." 2 Confidence there assuredly is, enough 

 and to spare, in the story told us, but whether, all things 

 considered, such confidence constitutes scientific merit 

 is quite another thing. 



The answer elicited to the other question is no less 

 wonderful though in another way. " It has been asked 

 why the birds have not on their side learnt that the 

 Arum is poisonous. The very question shows at once an 

 ingrained inability to understand the working of Natural 

 Selection. Every bird that eats Arum-berries gets 

 poisoned : but the other birds don't hold a coroner's 

 inquest upon its body, or inquire into the cause of death. 

 Naturally the same bird never eats the berries twice, 

 and so experience has nothing more to do in the matter 

 than in the famous illogicality about the skinning of 

 eels." 3 No doubt this reply is in true philosophic vein ; 

 and unquestionably " ingrained inability " is good. But, 



1 This nursery rhyme might be re-written in the scientific spirit 

 for the benefit of children of the future ; thus 



Who killed Cock Robin? 



I, says the Arum, 



My fruits ensnare him : 

 I killed Cock Robin. 



Who saw him die ? 



I, says Darwinian : 



It's my opinion : 

 I saw him die. 



2 Flowers and their Pedigrees, p. 2. 

 8 Ibid. p. 264. 



