LECTURES AND ESS A YS 



for not only are unfavourable specimens 

 not selected by nature, but they are 

 destroyed. This is what Mr. Darwin 

 calls " Natural Selection," which acts by 

 the preservation and accumulation of 

 small inherited modifications, each profit- 

 able to the preserved being. With this 

 idea he interpenetrates and leavens the 

 vast store of facts that he and others 

 have collected. We cannot, without 

 shutting our eyes through fear or preju- 

 dice, fail to see that Darwin is here 

 dealing, not with imaginary, but with 

 true causes ; nor can we fail to discern 

 what vast modifications may be produced 

 by natural selection in periods sufficiently 

 long. Each individual increment may 

 resemble what mathematicians call a 

 " differential " (a quantity indefinitely 

 small) ; but definite and great changes 

 may obviously be produced by the inte- 

 gration of these infinitesimal quantities, 

 through practically infinite time. 



If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the 

 notion of creative power, acting after 

 human fashion, it certainly is not because 

 he is unacquainted with the numberless 

 exquisite adaptations on which this 

 notion of a supernatural Artificer has 

 been founded. His book is a repository 

 of the most startling facts of this descrip 

 tion. Take the marvellous observation 

 which he cites from Dr. Kriiger, where a 

 bucket with an aperture serving as a 

 spout is formed in an orchid. Bees visit 

 the flower; in eager search of material 

 for their combs they push each other 

 into the bucket, the drenched ones 

 escaping from their involuntary bath by 

 the spout. Here they rub their backs 

 against the viscid stigma of the flower 

 and obtain glue ; then against the pollen- 

 masses, which are thus stuck to the back 

 of the bee and carried away. " When the 

 bee, so provided, flies to another flower, 

 or to the same flower a second time, and 

 is pushed by its comrades into the 

 bucket, and then crawls out by the 

 passage, the pollen-mass upon its back 

 necessarily comes first into contact with 

 the viscid stigma," which takes up the 

 pollen ; and this is how that orchid is 



fertilised. Or take this other case of the 

 Catasetum. " Bees visit these flowers 

 in order to gnaw the labellum ; in doing 

 this they inevitably touch a long, taper- 

 ing, sensitive projection. This, when 

 touched, transmits a sensation or vibra- 

 tion to a certain membrane, which is 

 instantly ruptured, setting free a spring, 

 by which the pollen-mass is shot forth 

 like an arrow in the right direction, and 

 adheres by its viscid extremity to the 

 back of the bee." In this way the fer- 

 tilising pollen is spread abroad. 



It is the mind thus stored with the 

 choicest materials of the teleologist that 

 rejects teleology, seeking to refer these 

 wonders to natural causes. They illus- 

 trate, according to him, the method of 

 nature, not the " technic " of a manlike 

 Artificer. The beauty of flowers is due 

 to natural selection. Those that distin- 

 guish themselves by vividly contrasting 

 colours from the surrounding green leaves 

 are most readily seen, most frequently 

 visited by insects, most often fertilised, and 

 hence most favoured by natural selection. 

 Coloured berries also readily attract the 

 attention of birds and beasts, which feed 

 upon them, spread their manured seeds 

 abroad, thus giving trees and shrubs pos- 

 sessing such berries a greater chance in 

 the struggle for existence. 



With profound analytic and synthetic 

 skill, Mr. Darwin investigates the cell- 

 making instinct of the hive-bee. His 

 method of dealing with it is representa- 

 tive. He falls back from the more per- 

 fectly to the less perfectly developed in- 

 stinct from the hive-bee to the humble- 

 bee, which uses its own cocoon as a 

 comb, and to classes of bees of interme- 

 diate skill endeavouring to show how the 

 passage might be gradually made from 

 the lowest to the highest. The saving 

 of wax is the most important point in 

 the economy of bees. Twelve to fifteen 

 pounds of dry sugar are said to be 

 needed for the secretion of a single 

 pound of wax. The quantities of nectar 

 necessary for the wax must therefore be 

 vast, and every improvement of construc- 

 tive instinct which results in the saving 



