The Nuptial Flight 



This idea is always astounding ; and 

 the further we penetrate into it, the fewer 

 do our certitudes become. Darwin, for 

 instance, to take the man of all men 

 who studied it the most methodically 

 and most passionately, Darwin, though 

 scarcely confessing it to himself, loses 

 confidence at every step, and retreats be- 

 fore the unexpected and the irreconcilable. 

 Would you have before you the nobly 

 humiliating spectacle of human genius 

 battling with infinite power, you have but 

 to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel 

 the strange, incoherent, inconceivably 

 mysterious laws of the sterility and 

 fecundity of hybrids, or of the varia- 

 tions of specific and generic characters. 

 Scarcely has he formulated a principle 

 when numberless exceptions assail him ; 

 and this very principle, soon completely 

 overwhelmed, is glad to find refuge in 

 some corner, and preserve a shred of 

 307 _. 



