288 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
worms (Lampyris), Strepsiptera, etc. This partial or com- 
plete degeneration of the wings of insects has evidently 
arisen from natural selection in the struggle for life. For 
we find insects without wings living under circumstances 
where flying would be useless, or even decidedly injurious 
tothem. If, for example, insects living on islands fly about 
much, it may easily happen that when flying they are blown 
into the sea by the wind, and if (as is always the case) 
the power of flying is differently developed in different 
individuals, then those which fly badly have an advantage 
over those which fly well ; they are less easily blown into 
the sea, and remain longer in life than the individuals of the 
same species which fly well. In the course of many 
generations, by the action of natural selection, this cir- 
cumstance must necessarily leads to a complete suppression 
of the wings. If this conclusion had been arrived at on 
purely theoretical grounds, we might be pleased to find its 
truth established by facts. For upon isolated islands the 
proportion of wingless insects to those possessing wings is 
surprisingly large, much larger than among the insects 
inhabiting continents. Thus, for example, according to 
Wollaston, of the 550 species of beetles which inhabit the 
island of Madeira, 220 are wingless, or possess such imperfect 
wings that they can no longer fly; and of the 29 genera 
which belong to that island exclusively, no less than 23 con- 
tain such species only. It is evident that this remarkable 
circumstance does not need to be explained by the special 
wisdom of the Creator, but is sufficiently accounted for by 
natural selection, because in this case the hereditary disuse 
of the wings, the discontinuance of flying in the presence 
of dangerous winds, has been very advantageous in the 
