INSECTS 



The germ cells accompanying each new soma undergo a 

 series of transformations within the parent body before 

 thev themselves are capable of accomplishing their pur- 

 pose. They multiply enormously. With some animals, 

 only a few of them ever produce new members of the race; 

 but with insects, whose motto is "safety in numbers," 

 each species produces every season a great abundance of 

 new individuals, to the end that the many forces arrayed 

 against them may not bring about their extermination. 



The world seems full of forces opposed to organized life. 

 But the truth is, all organization is an opposition to 

 established forces. The reason that the forms of life now 

 existing have held their places in nature is that they have 

 found and perfected ways and means of opposing, for a 

 time, the forces that tend to the dissipation of energy. 

 Life is a revolt against inertia. Those species that have 

 died out are extinct, either because they came to the end 

 of their resources, or because they became so inflexibly 

 adapted to a certain kind -of life that thev were unable to 

 meet the emergency of a change in the conditions that 

 made this life possible. Efficiency in the ordinary means 

 of living, rather than specialization for a particular way of 

 living, appears to be the best guarantee of continued 

 existence. 



[I2 4 l 



