214 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
ants, dragon-flies, tiger-beetles, and other rapacious 
kinds, kill their prey at once, but paralysed it by 
stinging its nerve centres to make it incapable of 
resistance, and stored it in a closed cell, so that the 
grub to be hatched by and by should have fresh 
meat to feed on—not fresh-killed but live meat. 
Thus the old vexed question—How reconcile 
these facts with the idea of a beneficent Being who 
designed it all—did not come to me from reading, 
nor from teachers, since I had none, but was thrust 
upon me by nature itself. In spite, however, of its 
having come in that sharp way, I, like many another, 
succeeded in putting the painful question from me 
and keeping to the old traditions. The noise of the 
battle of Evolution, which had been going on for 
years, hardly reached me; it was but a faintly 
heard murmur, as of storms immeasurably far away 
“on alien shores.” This could not last. 
One day an elder brother, on his return from 
travel in distant lands, put a copy of the famous 
Origin of Species in my hands and advised me to 
read it. When I had done so, he asked me what I 
thought of it. “It’s false!” I exclaimed in a 
passion, and he laughed, little knowing how import- 
ant a matter this was to me, and told me Y could 
have the book if I liked. I took it without thanks 
and read it again and thought a good deal about it, 
and was nevertheless able to resist its teachings 
for years, solely because I could not endure to part 
with a philosophy of life, if I may so describe it, 
which could not logically be held, if Darwin was 
