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 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 preceding and intermediate gradations.
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