he jurassic age; there are no fossil remains of
habits, but nevertheless he can tell us plenty about them, things worthy
of credence, because the present teaches him the past. Let us do a
little as he does.

I will suppose a precursor of the Calicurgi (The Calicurgus, or
Pompilus, is a Hunting Wasp, feeding her larvae on Spiders. Cf. "The
Life and Love of the Insect": chapter 12.--Translator's Note.) dwelling
in the prehistoric coal-forests. Her prey was some hideous Scorpion,
that first-born of the Arachnida. How did the Hymenopteron master the
terrible prey? Analogy tells us, by the methods of the present slayer of
Tarantulae. It disarmed the adversary; it paralysed the venomous sting
by a stroke administered at a point which we could determine for certain
by the animal's anatomy. Unless this was the way it happened, the
assailant must have perished, first stabbed and then devoured by the
prey. There is no getting away from it: either the precursor of the
Calicurgi, that slaughterer of Scorpions, knew her trade thoroughly, or
else the continuation of her race became impossible, even as it would
be impossible to keep up the race of the Tarantula-killer without the
dagger-thrust that paralyses the Spider's poison-fangs. The first who,
greatly daring, pinked the Scorpion of the coal-seams was already an
expert fencer; the first to come to grips with the Tarantula had an
unerring knowledge of her dangerous surgery. The least hesitation, the
slightest speculation; and they were lost. The first teacher would also
have been the last, with no disciples to take up her work and perfect
it.

But fossil instincts, they insist, would show us intermediary stages,
first, second and third rungs; they would show us the gradual passing
from the casual and very incorrect attempt to the perfect practice, the
fruit of the ages; with their accidental differences, they would give
us terms of comparison wherewith to trace matters from the simple to the
complex. Never mind about that, my masters: if you want varied instincts
in which to seek the source of the complex by means of the simple, it
is not necessary to search the foliations of the coal-seams and the
successive layers of the rocks, those archives of the prehistoric world;
the present day affords to contemplation an inexhaustible treasury
realizing perhaps everything that can emerge from the limbo of
possibility. In what will soon be half a century of study, I have caught
but a tin