LIFE THE TRAVELER 
ance. Are not all characters adaptive from the 
first? Do not all organs have an inherent tendency 
to shape themselves for the use of the organism? 
Does natural selection do any pruning here? The 
eye, from its first appearance as a pigmented spot 
in the earliest form, is adapted for seeing, the ear 
for hearing, the teeth for cutting and grinding. Life 
knows what it wants from the start. I do not be- 
lieve that there is any blind groping in the organ- 
ism. The blind groping begins when the organism 
begins to live, or to find its way in the world. Then 
it comes in contact with blind forces whose couper- 
ation it needs, but which heed it not. Then it must 
fit itself to its environment by the trial-and-error 
process. 
The winds and air-currents do help to explain 
the winged seeds, but do not help to explain why 
Nature is so much more solicitous about some 
seeds than about others. What a beautiful and 
ingenious device is the delicate parachute of the 
dandelion-seed, and the balloon of the thistle! but 
scores of other troublesome plants have no such 
device. 
What possible advantage can it be to the honey- 
bee that it should lose its sting, and hence its life, 
in the wound it inflicts — any more than it would 
be to the advantage of a man to lose his sword in 
the flesh of his enemy, and have his arm pulled out 
of the socket into the bargain? The wasps and 
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