22 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
raises the question which it cannot answer — Why in a guilty 
world, why in a world of limited space, why in a world where 
creatures must prey upon one another, none have contrivances 
for self-immolation or self-punishment, notwithstanding the 
obvious advantage to the general system of things which such 
appendages would entail ? It is impossible to set this down to 
the benevolence of special design, while Nature abounds in con- 
trivances like the hairs of the stinging-nettle and Venus’ fly- 
trap, and the sting of the hornet, and a whole host besides of 
stings and fangs and prickles and thorns and horns and cruel 
jaws and jagged teeth and claws and talons and irritating 
surfaces and noxious breaths and odours. 
The wonderful voracity of some animals is matched, in- 
deed, by the wonderful fertility of others ; but if both are the 
results of special design, there is little to excite our admira- 
tion. If some animals were specially designed to be the food 
of others ; if some were specially contrived to inflict upon others 
weakness, disease, and death ; if the necessity of keeping under 
the number of individuals in every species was distinctly con- 
templated at the creation, there is nothing to admire in the 
fact that no species presents any special contrivances to enable 
its pursuers to capture and destroy it, nor any for self-torture, 
nor any for the limitation of its own numbers. Rather these 
are defects in the plan, scarcely credible inconsistencies. 
Allow, on the other hand, that the species of animal life have 
been gradually developed through wisely-ordained processes of 
variation, with natural selection thereupon attendant, and the 
difficulties at once vanish. We see then why creatures in 
general present no contrivances injurious to themselves, because 
such are the least likely to be preserved, and why they 
present many injurious to other animals, because such con- 
trivances are beneficial to the possessor ; we see why the 
most highly organised animals are most susceptible to pain, 
because pain is the most efficient monitor and guardian of 
animal organisation ; so that every variation unprotected by its 
warnings would soon be lost. The voracity of some animals, so 
hard to accept as the benevolence of special design, is easily 
intelligible as an advantage developed in the struggle for 
existence, carrying with it superior strength and courage ; and 
while some species are gradually developing voracious appetites, 
others will find a corresponding advantage in increased ferti- 
lity. A pair of common plaice will become the parents of a 
hundred thousand or a million young ones, and out of that vast 
crowd not more, on the average, than two will survive to the 
prime of life. As the French general said of Englishmen’s 
irregular bravery, “ It is magnificent, but it is not war,” we 
may say of the extraordinary fertility which enables many 
