r on both sides, that some other contrivances
are less perfect. Can we consider the sting of the wasp or of the bee
as perfect, which, when used against many attacking animals, cannot be
withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures, and so inevitably causes
the death of the insect by tearing out its viscera?

If we look at the sting of the bee, as having originally existed in a
remote progenitor as a boring and serrated instrument, like that in so
many members of the same great order, and which has been modified
but not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally
adapted to cause galls subsequently intensified, we can perhaps
understand how it is that the use of the sting should so often cause the
insect's own death: for if on the whole the power of stinging be
useful to the community, it will fulfil all the requirements of natural
selection, though it may cause the death of some few members. If we
admire the truly wonderful power of scent by which the males of many
insects find their females, can we admire the production for this
single purpose of thousands of drones, which are utterly useless to the
community for any other end, and which are ultimately slaughtered by
their industrious and sterile sisters? It may be difficult, but we ought
to admire the savage instinctive hatred of the queen-bee, which urges
her instantly to destroy the 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 discussed 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 independent 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 pr