y
with which it comes into competition. And we see that this is the
standard of perfection attained under nature. The endemic productions of
New Zealand, for instance, are perfect, one compared with another; but
they are now rapidly yielding before the advancing legions of plants
and animals introduced from Europe. Natural selection will not produce
absolute perfection, nor do we always meet, as far as we can judge, with
this high standard under nature. The correction for the aberration of
light is said by Muller not to be perfect even in that most perfect
organ, the human eye. Helmholtz, whose judgment no one will dispute,
after describing in the strongest terms the wonderful powers of the
human eye, adds these remarkable words: "That which we have discovered
in the way of inexactness and imperfection in the optical machine and
in the image on the retina, is as nothing in comparison with the
incongruities which we have just come across in the domain of the
sensations. One might say that nature has taken delight in accumulating
contradictions in order to remove all foundation from the theory of a
pre-existing harmony between the external and internal worlds." If our
reason 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 bee as perfect, which, when used against many
kinds of enemies, cannot be withdrawn, owing to the backward serratures,
and thus inevitably causes the death of the insect by tearing out its
viscera?

If we look at the sting of the bee, as having existed in a remote
progenitor, as a boring and serrated instrument, like that in so many
members of the same great order, and that it has since been modified
but not perfected for its present purpose, with the poison originally
adapted for some other object, such as to produce galls, since
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 social 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
utte