44 



I believe that "the gf>o*e seems to have a singularly inflexible 

 organization." It is a bird that is too much for Natural Selection. 

 I am sorry for it, but I can't help it. You say that the goose 

 is too wise for me. That I hold to be impossible in any created 

 being or creature, let alone a goose or a gander either, for the 

 matter of that. 



I believe, u I can see no difficulty in Natural Selection 

 preserving and accumulating variations of instinct to any extent 

 that was profitable. It is thus I believe that all the most complex 

 and wonderful instincts have originated." Once on a time, I 

 mean, bees had no such instincts as they have now; nor had ants, 

 nor migratory birds. At that early date Natural Selection had 

 not been " called into play " That's all. 



I believe that the spider was once without the instinct which 

 now prompts it to spin its web, without the legs it now has, 

 without the habits it now has, without its spinnerets, and 

 fore without the power of catching insects to live 

 on How it lived then, I am not quite prepared at present 

 to say, nor whether it was a spider at all or not. Nor can 

 I say, as to its " complex instincts," how it could have done 

 with only the beginning of a web to support it through all the 

 thousands and millions of ages that it took to come to its present 

 state. You may suggest that it must have been created a spider 

 to be able to act as a spider, but that does not fit in with my 

 notions. Don't tell inc. 



I believe that originally the a fertile males and females of the 

 same community transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency 

 to produce sterile members." llmv there could have been a 

 community of the kind we now see with any sterile members 

 of it, all being fertile, I do not explain. You may call my theory 

 a mere fable and idle dream, but in my own opinion it is worthy 

 of Aristotle himself. 



I believe that while some of the fertile females of the 



community were transforming- themselves or their offspring into 



a members for the benefit of a future society which did imi 



exist, some one female was aotfag in the opposite direction, 



for the prolurtionof u mother general of the whole hive; in other 



