Chap. VI. SUMMARY. 203 



young queens her daughters as soon as born, or to 

 perish herself in the combat; for undoubtedly this is 

 for the good of the community ; and maternal love or 

 maternal hatred, though the latter fortunately is most 

 rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of 

 natural selection. If we admire the several ingenious 

 contrivances, by which the flowers of the orchis and of 

 many other plants are fertilised through insect agency, 

 can we consider as equally perfect the elaboration by 

 our fir-trees of dense clouds of pollen, in order that a 

 few granules may be wafted by a chance breeze on to 

 the ovules ? 



Summary of Chapter. — We have in this chapter dis- 

 cussed some of the difficulties and objections which may 

 be urged against my theory. Many of them are very 

 grave ; but I think that in the discussion light has been 

 thrown on several facts, which on the theory of inde- 

 pendent acts of creation are utterly obscure. We have 

 seen that species at any one period are not indefinitely 

 variable, and are not linked together by a multitude 

 of intermediate gradations, partly because the process of 

 natural selection will always be very slow, and will act, 

 at any one time, only on a very few forms ; and partly 

 because the very process of natural selection almost 

 implies the continual supplanting and extinction of pre- 

 ceding and intermediate gradations. Closely allied spe- 

 cies, now living on a continuous area, must often have 

 been formed when the area was not continuous, and 

 when the conditions of life did not insensibly graduate 

 away from one part to another. When two varieties 

 are formed in two districts of a continuous area, an in- 

 termediate variety will often be formed, fitted for an 

 intermediate zone ; but from reasons assigned, the inter- 

 mediate variety will usually exist in lesser numbers than 



