better endowed
with implements and talents. In the fierce riot of empty bellies, she
does what she can with the gifts at her disposal.

CHAPTER 9. THE THEORY OF PARASITISM.

The Melecta does what she can with the gifts at her disposal. I should
leave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave charge
brought against her. She is accused of having lost, for want of use and
through laziness, the workman's tools with which, so we are told, she
was originally endowed. Finding it to her advantage to do nothing,
bringing up her family free of expense, to the detriment of others, she
is alleged to have gradually inspired her race with an abhorrence for
work. The harvesting-tools, less and less often employed, dwindled
and perished as organs having no function; the species changed into
a different one; and finally idleness turned the honest worker of the
outset into a parasite. This brings us to a very simple and seductive
theory of parasitism, worthy to be discussed with all respect. Let us
set it forth.

Some mother, nearing the end of her labours and in a hurry to lay her
eggs, found, let us suppose, some convenient cells provisioned by her
fellows. There was no time for nest-building and foraging; if she would
save her family, she must perforce appropriate the fruit of another's
toil. Thus relieved of the tedium and fatigue of work, freed of every
care but that of laying eggs, she left a progeny which duly inherited
the maternal slothfulness and handed this down in its turn, in a more
and more accentuated form, as generation followed on generation; for the
struggle for life made this expeditious way of establishing yourself one
of the most favourable conditions for the success of the offspring. At
the same time, the organs of work, left unemployed, became atrophied and
disappeared, while certain details of shape and colouring were modified
more or less, so as to adapt themselves to the new circumstances. Thus
the parasitic race was definitely established.

This race, however, was not too greatly transformed for us to be able,
in certain cases, to trace its origin. The parasite has retained more
than one feature of those industrious ancestors. So, for instance,
the Psithyrus is extremely like the Bumble-bee, whose parasite and
descendant she is. The Stelis preserves the ancestral characteristics of
the Anthidium; the Coelioxys-bee recalls the Leaf-cutter.

Thus speak the evolutionists, with a wealth o