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 I 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 



