37^ The Hunting Wasps 



not possess. They will know by instinct the 

 point or points towards which the sting must 

 be directed ; for, if they were still in the pren- 

 tice stage, if they and their successors had to 

 risk the chance that accident would tend gradu- 

 ally to strengthen the nascent impulse, they 

 would be going back to the likelihood so near 

 allied to nil ; they would go back to it year by 

 year, for centuries to come ; and yet the one 

 and only favourable chance would have to be 

 always recurring. I find it very difficult to 

 believe in a habit acquired by this prolonged 

 repetition of incidents whereof not one can 

 take place without excluding so many contrary 

 chances. It is a simple matter of arithmetic 

 to show the number of absurdities against which 

 the theorists rush headlong. 



Nor is this all. We should have to ask our- 

 selves how casual actions, to which the insect 

 was not predisposed by nature, can become the 

 source of a hereditary transmissible habit. We 

 should look upon a man as a sorry wag who 

 came to us and said that the descendant of the 

 desnucador knows the art of slaughtering cattle 

 from A to Z merely through being the son of 

 his father, without the aid of precept or example. 

 The father does not use his blade just once or 

 twice, by accident ; he operates every day and 

 scores of times a day ; he goes to work with 



