HIT-AND-MISS METHOD OF NATURE 



there is no waste of anything in the universe. How 

 can the Infinite waste or be wasted? 



If we believe our astronomy, the evolution of suns 

 and systems is often the result of the same fortui- 

 tous method of Nature. Two dark bodies, — burnt- 

 out suns, — shooting at random through the depth 

 of infinite space, collide, and the kinetic energy of 

 the collision passes into the potential energy of heat, 

 and the two bodies, or parts of them, become incan- 

 descent nebular matter which, in the course of in- 

 calculable time, condenses again into suns with 

 their antecedent worlds. Our own planetary system 

 may have been the result of such a chance colli- 

 sion of dead suns in the cosmic dramas of sidereal 

 space. 



This random method of Nature is again well illus- 

 trated in the case of the drones and the queen bee in 

 the hive. The drones are there to fertilize the queen, 

 and the queen is there to perpetuate the swarm, as 

 she is the one mother bee in the hive. If she is not 

 fertilized, her eggs produce drones and nothing else. 

 Here again we see what a spendthrift Nature is in 

 regard to the male principle. The case of the bees 

 is analogous to the fertilization of the flowers by 

 the agency of the wind — the same hit-and-miss 

 procedure. A thousand minute grains of pollen are 

 thrown to the winds, when one will do the work if 

 it hits the mark. But the chances are that it will not 

 hit the mark; so a thousand or more are fired blindly 

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