air." 1 "We do not see the transitional grade through which the wings of birds have passed; but what special difficulty is there in believing that it might profit the modified descendants of the penguin, first to become enabled to flap along the surface of the sea, like the loggerheaded duck, and ultimately to rise from its surface and glide through the air?"2 "The tail of the giraffe looks like an artificially constructed fly-flapper; and it seems at first incredible that this should have been adapted for its present purpose by successive slight modifications, each better and better, for so trifling an object as driving away flies; yet we should pause before being too positive even in this case, for a well-developed tail having been formed in an aquatic animal, it might subsequently come to be worked in for all sorts of purposes as a fly-flapper, an organ of prehension, or as aid in turning, as with the dog."

3

In this way, the tail of a horse may have been derived from that of a shark, the tail of a cow from the skate, and the giraffe owe his flyflapper to a remote progenitor, the sturgeon. Or, if there be any who think that to affirm this

1 "Origin of Species," First Edition, p. 328.

2 Ibid., p. 329.

3 Ibid., p. 215.

is to affirm too much, Mr. Darwin' may still ask (as above) "What special difficulty there is in believing" it? Especially "since it certainly is not true that new organs appear suddenly in class."

any

The counterpart of this strange story is still more worthy of a place in the record of the "Thousand and One Nights." For not only have so many terrestrial creatures been derived from an "aquatic origin "2 by that marvellous metaphor called Natural Selection, but, on the other hand, there are not wanting some landanimals that, renouncing their original nature, have become aquatic. Surprising as it may be to learn that a giraffe was once a fish, it is not less surprising to be told that a whale was once a bear, And yet, " In North America, the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely-open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. I see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered by Natural Selection more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale." 3 With this difference, however: that,

1 "Origin of Species," First Edition, p. 214.

2 Ibid., p. 215.

In the third and subsequent editions, the latter part

when the ursine whale began his career he had his tail to make-an operation exactly the reverse of that in the previous story. The land animals, having been fishes, derived their tails from the waters; but in this latter case a land animal goes into the water to live like a fish and procure a tail. Humorous? Not at all. Perfectly serious. Consider the authority of Mr. Huxley, and remember that "the hypothesis postulates the unlimited modifiability of matter."

Nor is it matter alone which, in the hands of "Natural Selection" presents the marvellous transformations due to unlimited modifiability. "Under changed conditions of life," says Mr. Darwin, "it is at least possible that slight modifications of instinct might be profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that instincts. do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in Natural Selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable. It is thus, I believe, that all the most complex and wonderful instincts have originated." 1

No

of this passage is omitted, for no apparent reason. hint is given that Mr. Darwin now sees any difficulty where he saw none before, and the statement as now left still contains the suggested transformation; a suggestion strengthened by the connection in which it is found.

1 "Origin of Species," p. 229.

This is too much for M. Flourens. Surely," says that accomplished naturalist, "we cannot take this as meant to be serious. Natural Selection choosing an instinct!

La poésie a ses licences, mais

Celle-ci passe un peu les bornes que j'y mets.'" 1

Mr. Darwin, however, is serious enough, and maintains in all good faith, that peculiar instincts are in all cases the result not of original endowment, but of subsequent acquisition; "by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous slight, yet profitable variations."2 Individual life, as well as the life of the community, whether in ants or bees, was once a totally different thing from what we now behold; then beavers did not build, and neither the stork nor the swallow knew their appointed seasons.

In treating of the ants and the honey-bee, Mr. Darwin attempts to account for that striking peculiarity-the groundwork of much of their polity-the existence of neuters.

66

Thus, I believe," he says, "it has been with social insects; a slight modification of structure or instinct,

1 "Examen du Livre de M. Darwin sur L'Origine des Espèces." Par P. Flourens. (Paris, 1864.) P. 55. Vide infrà: Appendix, Note C. 2 "Origin of Species," p. 230.

correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, has been advantageous to the community; consequently the fertile males and females of the same community flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members, having the same modification. And I believe this process has been repeated, until that prodigious amount of difference between the fertile and sterile females of the same species has been produced, which we see in many social insects."1

"

But the very existence of "the community (in the case of the honey-bees, for example) depends upon the specific arrangements of the present polity and constitution. Alter these arrangements, and the polity is at an end; "the community" exists no longer. If, therefore, at any time, all the females were fertile, as this explanation implies that they once were, then "the community" did not exist; and its operations, however "slight," in "modification of structure, or instinct," at a time when it was non-existent, are unimaginable, except in Utopia.

If only they were imaginable, the "scientific imagination" would not lack exercise. We should in that case have to imagine that when the fertile females were transforming-not themselves but their posterity into sterile members

1 "Origin of Species," p. 260.