D THE PRESERVATION OF THE
SPECIES--FOODS MANUFACTURED BY THE PARENTS FOR THEIR
YOUNG--SPECIES WHICH OBTAIN FOR THEIR LARVAE FOODS
MANUFACTURED BY OTHERS--CARCASSES OF ANIMALS STORED
UP--PROVISION OF PARALYSED LIVING ANIMALS--THE CAUSE OF THE
PARALYSIS--THE SURENESS OF INSTINCT--SIMILAR CASES IN WHICH
THE SPECIFIC INSTINCT IS LESS POWERFUL AND INDIVIDUAL
INITIATIVE GREATER--GENERA LESS SKILFUL IN THE ART OF
PARALYSING VICTIMS.

_The preservation of the individual and the preservation of the
species._--In the previous chapter we have seen animals preparing for
the future, and amassing materials for their own subsistence. In other
cases these provisions are destined to feed the young. It is the same
industry, sometimes exercised for the preservation of the individual,
sometimes for the perpetuation of the race. We must expect to find
acts of the last kind more instinctive and less reflective than those
of the first, and this agrees well with what we know of natural
selection. If we now see living beings display so many resources and
calculate with such certainty all that will favour the healthy
development of their descendants, we must not necessarily conclude
that the species possess these instincts from the beginning. They are
not to be regarded as mechanisms artfully wound up and functioning
since the appearance of life on the earth with the same inevitable
regularity. The qualities which we find in them were weak at first;
they have developed in the course of ages, and have finally, by
heredity, been impressed upon the creatures to manifest themselves by
necessary acts from which there is no longer any escape. There is no
need for surprise if we meet to-day, I do not say among all, but among
a very large number of animals, this foresight for offspring in a
well-marked form. It is easy to understand that the species that first
acquired and fixed an instinct propitious to the increase of the race
has rapidly prospered, stifling beneath its extension those that are
less favoured from this point of view, which is of capital importance
in a struggle for a place beneath the sun. At the present day if the
struggle of animal life offers few facts of lack of foresight for the
rearing of young, it is because this defect has killed the races who
were subject to it; they have disappeared, or have only been saved by
qualities of another order.

For the rest, if it is difficult to reconstitute ex