lasting immobility; before they learnt how to consume, without incurring
the risk of putrefaction, so corpulent a prey: in brief, before they
combined these three conditions of success, what did the Scoliae do?

The Darwinian school will reply that they were hesitating, essaying,
experimenting. A long series of blind gropings eventually hit upon the most
favourable combination, a combination henceforth to be perpetuated by
hereditary transmission. The skilful co-ordination between the end and the
means was originally the result of an accident.

Chance! A convenient refuge! I shrug my shoulders when I hear it invoked to
explain the genesis of an instinct so complex as that of the Scoliae. In
the beginning, you say, the creature gropes and feels its way; there is
nothing settled about its preferences. To feed its carnivorous larvae it
levies tribute on every species of game which is not too much for the
huntress' power or the nurseling's appetite; its descendants try now this,
now that, now something else, at random, until the accumulated centuries
lead to the selection which best suits the race. Then habit grows fixed and
becomes instinct.

Very well. Let us agree that the Scolia of antiquity sought a different
prey from that adopted by the modern huntress. If the family throve upon a
diet now discontinued, we fail to see that the descendants had any reason
to change it: animals have not the gastronomic fancies of an epicure whom
satiety makes difficult to please. Because the race did well upon this
fare, it became habitual; and instinct became differently fixed from what
it is to-day. If, on the other hand, the original food was unsuitable, the
existence of the family was jeopardized; and any attempt at future
improvement became impossible, because an unhappily inspired mother would
leave no heirs.