leads us to admire with enthusiasm a multitude of
inimitable contrivances in nature, this same reason tells us, though we may
easily err 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used against many attacking animals, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the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 {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 discussed some of the
difficulties and objections which may be urged against my theory. Many of
them are very serious; 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 spe