I have discussed elsewhere the stings administered by the Wasps to
their prey. Now chemistry comes and puts a spoke in the wheel of our
arguments, telling us that the poison of the Bees is not the same as
that of the Wasps. The Bees' is complex and formed of two elements, acid
and alkaline. The Wasps' possess only the acid element; and it is to
this very acidity and not to the 'so-called' skill of the operators that
the preservation of the provisions is due. (The author's numerous essays
on the Wasps will form the contents of later works. In the meantime, cf.
"Insect Life," by J.H. Fabre, translated by the author of "Mademoiselle
Mori": chapters 4 to 12, and 14 to 18; and "The Life and Love of the
Insect," by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:
chapters 11, 12 and 17.--Translator's Note.)
Admitting that there is a difference in the nature of the venom, I fail
to see that this has any bearing on the problem in hand. I can inoculate
with various liquids--acids, weak nitric acid, alkalis, ammonia, neutral
bodies, spirits of wine, essence of turpentine--and obtain conditions
similar to those of the victims of the predatory insects, that is to
say, inertia with the persistence of a dull vitality betrayed by
the movements of the mouth-parts and antennae. I am not, of course,
invariably successful, for there is neither delicacy nor precision in
my poisoned needle and the wound which it makes does not bear comparison
with the tiny puncture of the unerring natural sting; but, after all,
it is repeated often enough to put the object of my experiment beyond
doubt. I should add that, to achieve success, we must have a subject
with a concentrated ganglionic column, such as the Weevil, the
Buprestis, the Dung-beetle and others. Paralysis is then obtained with
but a single prick, made at the point which the Cerceris has revealed
to us, the point at which the corselet joins the rest of the thorax. In
that case, the least possible quantity of the acrid liquid is instilled,
a quantity too small to endanger the patient's life. With scattered
nervous centres, each requiring a separate operation, this method is
impracticable: the victim would die of the excess of corrosive fluid. I
am quite ashamed to have to recall these old experiments. Had they been
resumed and carried on by others of greater authority than I, we should
have escaped the objections of chemistry.
When light is so easy to obtain, why go in search of scientific
obscurity? Why talk of acid or alkaline reactions, which prove nothing,
when it is so simple to have recourse to facts, which prove everything?
Before declaring that the hunting insects' poison has preservative
properties merely because of its acid qualities, it would have been well
to enquire if the sting of a Bee, with its acid and its alkali, could
not perchance produce the same effects as that of the paralyser, whose
skill is categorically denied. The chemists never gave this a thought.
Simplicity is not always welcome in our laboratories. It is my duty to
repair that little omission. I propose to enquire if the poison of the
Bee, the chief of the Apidae, is suitable for a surgery that paralyses
without killing.
The enquiry bristles with difficulties, though this is no reason for
abandoning it. First and foremost, I cannot possibly operate with the
Bee just as I catch her. Time after time I make the attempt, without
once succeeding; and patience becomes exhausted. The sting has to
penetrate at a definite point, exactly where the Wasp's sting would
have entered. My intractable captive tosses about angrily and stings at
random, never where I wish. My fingers get hurt even oftener than the
patient. I have only one means of gaining a little control over the
indomitable dart; and that is to cut off the Bee's abdomen with my
scissors, to seize the stump instantly with a fine forceps and to apply
the tip at the spot where the sting is to enter.
Everybody knows that the Bee's abdomen needs no orders from the head
to go on drawing its weapon for a few instants longer and to avenge
the deceased before being itself overcome with death's inertia. This
vindictive persistency serves me to perfection. There is another
circumstance in my favour: the barbed sting remains where it is, which
enables me to ascertain the exact spot pierced. A needle withdrawn
as soon as inserted would leave me doubtful. I can also, when the
transparency of the tissues permits, perceive the direction of the
weapon, whether perpendicular and favourable to my plans, or slanting
and therefore valueless. Those are the advantages.
The disadvantages are these: the amputated abdomen, though more
tractable than the entire Bee, is still far from satisfying my wishes.
It gives capricious starts and unexpected pricks. I want it to sting
here. No, it balks my forceps and goes and stings elsewhere: not very
far away, I admit; but it takes so little to miss the nerve-centre which
we wish to get at. I want it to go in perpendicularly. No, in the
great majority of cases it enters obliquely and passes only through the
epidermis. This is enough to show how many failures are needed to make
one success.
Nor is this all. I shall be telling nobody anything new when I recall
the fact that the Bee's sting is very painful. That of the hunting
insects, on the contrary, is in most cases insignificant. My skin, which
is no less sensitive than another's, pays no attention to it: I handle
Sphex, Ammophilae and Scoliae without heeding their lancet-pricks. I
have said this before; I remind the reader of it because of the matter
in hand. In the absence of well-known chemical or other properties, we
have really but one means of comparing the two respective poisons; and
that is the amount of pain produced. All the rest is mystery. Besides,
no poison, not even that of the Rattlesnake, has hitherto revealed the
cause of its dread effects.
Acting, therefore, under the instruction of that one guide, pain, I
place the Bee's sting far above that of the predatory insects as an
offensive weapon. A single one of its thrusts must equal and often
surpass in efficaciousness the repeated wounds of the other. For all
these reasons--an excessive display of energy; the variable quantity of
the virus inoculated by a wriggling abdomen which no longer measures the
emission by doses; a sting which I cannot direct as I please; a wound
which may be deep or superficial, the weapon entering perpendicularly or
obliquely, touching the nerve-centres or affecting only the surrounding
tissues--my experiments ought to produce the most varied results.
I obtain, in fact, every possible kind of disorder: ataxy, temporary
disablement, permanent disablement, complete paralysis, partial
paralysis. Some of my stricken victims recover; others die after a brief
interval. It would be an unnecessary waste of space to record in this
volume my hundred and one attempts. The details would form tedious
reading and be of very little advantage, as in this sort of study it
is impossible to marshal one's facts with any regularity. I will,
therefore, sum them up in a few examples.
A colossal member of the Grasshopper tribe, the most powerful in my
district, Decticus verrucivorus (This Decticus has received its specific
name of verrucivorus, or Wart-eating, because it is employed by
the peasants in Sweden and elsewhere to bite off the warts on their
fingers.--Translator's Note.), is pricked at the base of the neck, on
the line of the fore-legs, at the median point. The prick goes straight
down. The spot is the same as that pierced by the sting of the slayer
of Crickets and Ephippigers. (A species of Green Grasshopper. The Sphex
paralyses Crickets and Grasshoppers to provide food for her grubs. Cf.
"Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12.--Translator's Note.) The giantess, as
soon as stung, kicks furiously, flounders about, falls on her side and
is unable to get up again. The fore-legs are paralysed; the others are
capable of moving. Lying sideways, if not interfered with, the insect in
a few moments gives no signs of life beyond a fluttering of the antennae
and palpi, a pulsation of the abdomen and a convulsive uplifting of the
ovipositor; but, if irritated with a slight touch, it stirs its four
hind-legs, especially the third pair, those with the big thighs, which
kick vigorously. Next day, the condition is much the same, with an
aggravation of the paralysis, which has now attacked the middle-legs.
On the day after that, the legs do not move, but the antennae, the palpi
and the ovipositor continue to flutter actively. This is the condition
of the Ephippiger stabbed three times in the thorax by the Languedocian
Sphex. One point alone is missing, a most important point: the long
persistence of a remnant of life. In fact, on the fourth day, the
Decticus is dead; her dark colour tells me so.
There are two conclusions to be drawn from this experiment and it is
well to emphasise them. First, the Bee's poison is so active that a
single dagger-thrust aimed at a nervous centre kills in four days one
of the largest of the Orthoptera (An order of insects including the
Grasshoppers, Locusts, Cockroaches, Mantes and Earwigs, in addition
to the Stick- and Leaf-insects, Termites, Dragon-flies, May-flies,
Book-lice and others.--Translator's Note.), though an insect of powerful
constitution. Secondly, the paralysis at first affects only the legs
whose ganglion is attacked; next, it spreads slowly to the second
pair; lastly, it reaches the third. The local effect is diffused. This
diffusion, which might well take place in the victims of the predatory
insects, plays no part in the latters' method of operation. The egg,
which will be laid immediately afterwards, demands the complete inertia
of the prey from the outset. Hence all the nerve-centres that govern
locomotion must be numbed instantaneously by the virus.
I can now understand why the poison of the predatory Wasps is
comparatively painless in its effects. If it possessed the strength of
that of the Bee, a single stab would impair the vitality of the prey,
while leaving it for some days capable of violent movements that would
be very dangerous to the huntress and especially to the egg. More
moderate in its action, it is instilled at the different nervous
centres, as is the case more particularly with the caterpillars.
(Caterpillars are the prey of the Ammophila, which administers a
separate stab to each of the several ganglia.--Translator's Note.)
In this way, the requisite immobility is obtained at once; and,
notwithstanding the number of wounds, the victim is not a speedy corpse.
To the marvels of the paralysers' talent we must add one more: their
wonderful poison, the strength of which is regulated by delicate doses.
The Bee revenging herself intensifies the virulence of her poison; the
Sphex putting her grubs' provender to sleep weakens it, reduces it to
what is strictly necessary.
One more instance of nearly the same kind. I prefer to take my subjects
from among the Orthoptera, which, owing to their imposing size and the
thinness of their skin at the points to be attacked, lend themselves
better than other insects to my delicate manipulations. The armour of
a Buprestis, the fat blubber of a Rosechafer-grub, the contortions of
a caterpillar present almost insuperable obstacles to the success of
a sting which it is not in my power to direct. The insect which I
now offer to the Bee's lancet is the Great Green Grasshopper (Locusta
viridissima), the adult female. The prick is given in the median line of
the fore-legs.
The effect is overwhelming. For two or three seconds the insect writhes
in convulsions and then falls on its side, motionless throughout,
save in the ovipositor and the antennae. Nothing stirs so long as the
creature is left alone; but, if I tickle it with a hair-pencil, the four
hind-legs move sharply and grip the point. As for the fore-legs, smitten
in their nerve-centre, they are quite lifeless. The same condition
is maintained for three days longer. On the fifth day, the creeping
paralysis leaves nothing free but the antennae waving to and fro and
the abdomen throbbing and lifting up the ovipositor. On the sixth, the
Grasshopper begins to turn brown; she is dead. Except that the vestige
of life is more persistent, the case is the same as that of the
Decticus. If we can prolong the duration, we shall have the victim of
the Sphex.
But first let us look into the effect of a prick administered elsewhere
than opposite the thoracic ganglia. I cause a female Ephippiger to be
stung in the abdomen, about the middle of the lower surface. The patient
does not seem to trouble greatly about her wound: she clambers gallantly
up the sides of the bell-jar under which I have placed her; she goes on
hopping as before. Better still, she sets about browsing the vine-leaf
which I have given her for her consolation. A few hours pass and the
whole thing is forgotten. She has made a rapid and complete recovery.
A second is wounded in three places on the abdomen: in the middle and on
either side. On the first day, the insect seems to have felt nothing;
I see no sign of stiffness in its movements. No doubt it is suffering
acutely; but these stoics keep their troubles to themselves. Next day,
the Ephippiger drags her legs a little and walks somewhat slowly. Two
days more; and, when laid on her back, she is unable to turn over. On
the fifth day, she succumbs. This time, I have exceeded the dose; the
shock of receiving three stabs was too much for her.
And so with the others, down to the sensitive Cricket, who, pricked once
in the abdomen, recovers in one day from the painful experience and goes
back to her lettuce-leaf. But, if the wound is repeated a few times,
death ensues within a more or less short period. I make an
exception, among those who pay tribute to my cruel curiosity, of the
Rosechafer-grubs, who defy three and four needle-thrusts. They will
collapse suddenly and lie outstretched, flabby and lifeless; and, just
when I am thinking them dead or paralysed, the hardy creatures will
recover consciousness, move along on their backs (This is the usual mode
of progression of the Cetonia- or Rosechafer-grub. Cf. "The Life and
Love of the Insect": chapter 11.--Translator's Note.), bury themselves
in the mould. I can obtain no precise information from them. True, their
thinly scattered cilia and their breastplate of fat form a palisade and
a rampart against the sting, which nearly always enters only a little
way and that obliquely.
Let us leave these unmanageable ones and keep to the Orthoperon, which
is more amenable to experiment. A dagger-thrust, we were saying, kills
it if directed upon the ganglia of the thorax; it throws it into a
transient state of discomfort if directed upon another point. It is,
therefore, by its direct action upon the nervous centres that the poison
reveals its formidable properties.
To generalize and say that death is always near at hand when the sting
is administered in the thoracic ganglia would be going too far: it
occurs frequently, but there are a good many exceptions, resulting from
circumstances impossible to define. I cannot control the direction of
the sting, the depth attained, the quantity of poison shed; and the
stump of the Bee is very far from making up for my shortcomings. We have
here not the cunning sword-play of the predatory insect, but a casual
blow, ill-placed and ill-regulated. Any accident is possible, therefore,
from the gravest to the mildest. Let us mention some of the more
interesting.
An adult Praying Mantis (Mantis religiosa, so-called because the toothed
fore-legs, in which it catches and kills its prey, adopt, when folded,
an attitude resembling that of prayer.--Translator's Note.) is pricked
level with the attachment of the predatory legs. Had the wound been in
the centre, I should have witnessed an occurrence which, although I have
seen it many times, still arouses my liveliest emotion and surprise.
This is the sudden paralysis of the warrior's savage harpoons. No
machinery stops more abruptly when the mainspring breaks. As a rule, the
inertia of the predatory legs attacks the others in the course of a day
or two; and the palsied one dies in less than a week. But the present
sting is not in the exact centre. The dart has entered near the base
of the right leg, at less than a millimetre (.039 inch.--Translator's
Note.) from the median point. That leg is paralysed at once; the other
is not; and the insect employs it to the detriment of my unsuspecting
fingers, which are pricked to bleeding-point by the spike at the
tip. Not until to-morrow is the leg which wounded me to-day rendered
motionless. This time, the paralysis goes no farther. The Mantis
moves along quite well, with her corselet proudly raised, in her usual
attitude; but the predatory fore-arms, instead of being folded against
the chest, ready for attack, hang lifeless and open. I keep the cripple
for twelve days longer, during which she refuses all nourishment, being
incapable of using her tongs to seize the prey and lift it to her mouth.
The prolonged abstinence kills her.
Some suffer from locomotor ataxy. My notes recall an Ephippiger who,
pricked in the prothorax away from the median line, retained the use
of her six limbs without being able to walk or climb for lack of
co-ordination in her movements. A singular awkwardness left her wavering
between going back and going forward, between turning to the right and
turning to the left.
Some are smitten with semiparalysis. A Cetonia-grub, pricked away from
the centre on a level with the fore-legs, has her right side flaccid,
spread out, incapable of contracting, while the left side swells,
wrinkles and contracts. Since the left half no longer receives the
symmetrical cooperation of the right half, the grub, instead of curling
into the normal volute, closes its spiral on one side and leaves it wide
open on the other. The concentration of the nervous apparatus, poisoned
by the venom down one side of the body only, a longitudinal half,
explains this condition, which is the most remarkable of all.
There is nothing to be gained by multiplying these examples. We have
seen pretty clearly the great variety of results produced by the
haphazard sting of a Bee's abdomen; let us now come to the crux of the
matter. Can the Bee's poison reduce the prey to the condition required
by the predatory Wasp? Yes, I have proved it by experiment; but the
proof calls for so much patience that it seemed to me to suffice when
obtained once for each species. In such difficult conditions, with a
poison of excessive strength, a single success is conclusive proof; the
thing is possible so long as it occurs once.
A female Ephippiger is stung at the median point, just a little in front
of the fore-legs. Convulsive movements lasting for a few seconds
are followed by a fall to one side, with pulsations of the abdomen,
flutterings of the antennae and a few feeble movements of the legs. The
tarsi cling firmly to the hair-pencil which I hold out to them. I place
the insect on its back. It lies motionless. Its state is absolutely the
same as that to which the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life": chapter
10.--Translator's Note.) reduces her Ephippigers. For three weeks on
end, I see repeated in all its details the spectacle to which I have
been accustomed in the victims extracted from the burrows or taken from
the huntress: the wide-open mandibles, the quivering palpi and tarsi,
the ovipositor shuddering convulsively, the abdomen throbbing at long
intervals, the spark of life rekindled at the touch of a pencil. In
the fourth week, these signs of life, which have gradually weakened,
disappear, but the insect still remains irreproachably fresh. At last
a month passes; and the paralysed creature begins to turn brown. It is
over; death has come.
I have the same success with a Cricket and also with a Praying Mantis.
In all three cases, from the point of view of long-maintained freshness
and of the signs of life proved by slight movements, the resemblance
between my victim and those of the predatory insects is so great that no
Sphex and no Tachytes would have disowned the product of my devices. My
Cricket, my Ephippiger, my Mantis had the same freshness as theirs; they
preserved it as theirs did for a period amply sufficient to allow of
the grubs' complete evolution. They proved to me, in the most conclusive
manner, they prove to all whom it may interest, that the poison of the
Bees, leaving its hideous violence on one side, does not differ in its
effects from the poison of the predatory Wasps. Are they alkaline or
acid? The question is an idle one in this connection. Both of them
intoxicate, derange, torpify the nervous centres and thus produce either
death or paralysis, according to the method of inoculation. For the
moment, that is all. No one is yet able to say the last word on the
actions of those poisons, so terrible in infinitesimal doses. But on the
point under discussion we need no longer be ignorant: the Wasp owes the
preservation of her grub's provisions not to any special qualities of
her poison but to the extreme precision of her surgery.
A last and more plausible objection is that raised by Darwin when he
said that there were no fossil remains of instincts. And, if there were,
O master, what would they teach us? Not very much more than what we
learn from the instincts of to-day. Does not the geologist make the
erstwhile carcases live anew in our minds in the light of the world as
we see it? With nothing but analogy to guide them, he describes how
some saurian lived in the 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 tiny glimpse of a very tiny corner of the realm of instinct; and
the harvest gathered overwhelms me with its variety: I do not yet know
two species of predatory Wasps whose methods are exactly the same.
One gives a single stroke of the dagger, a second two, a third three, a
fourth nine or ten. One stabs here and the other there; and neither
is imitated by the next, who attacks elsewhere. This one injures the
cephalic centres and produces death; that one respects them and produces
paralysis. Some squeeze the cervical ganglia to obtain a temporary
torpor; others know nothing of the effects of compressing the brain. A
few make the prey disgorge, lest its honey should poison the offspring;
the majority do not resort to preventive manipulations. Here are some
that first disarm the foe, who carries poisoned daggers; yonder are
others and more numerous, who have no precautions to take before
murdering the unarmed prey. In the preliminary struggle, I know some who
grab their victims by the neck, by the rostrum, by the antennae, by the
caudal threads; I know some who throw them on their backs, some who
lift them breast to breast, some who operate on them in the vertical
position, some who attack them lengthwise and crosswise, some who climb
on their backs or on their abdomens, some who press on their backs to
force out a pectoral fissure, some who open their desperately contracted
coil, using the tip of the abdomen as a wedge. And so I could go on
indefinitely: every method of fencing is employed. What could I not also
say about the egg, slung pendulum-fashion by a thread from the ceiling,
when the live provisions are wriggling underneath; laid on a scanty
mouthful, a solitary opening dish, when the dead prey requires renewing
from day to-day; entrusted to the last joint stored away, when the
victuals are paralysed; fixed at a precise spot, entailing the least
danger to the consumer and the game, when the corpulent prey has to be
devoured with a special art that warrants its freshness!
Well, how can this multitude of varied instincts teach us anything
about gradual transformation? Will the one and only dagger-thrust of the
Cerceris and the Scolia take us to the two thrusts of the Calicurgus, to
the three thrusts of the Sphex, to the manifold thrust of the Ammophila?
Yes, if we consider only numerical progression. One and one are two; two
and one are three: so run the figures. But is this what we want to
know? What has arithmetic to do with the case? Is not the whole problem
subordinate to a condition that cannot be translated into cyphers? As
the prey changes, the anatomy changes; and the surgeon always operates
with a complete understanding of his subject. The single dagger-thrust
is administered to ganglia collected into a common cluster; the manifold
thrusts are distributed over the scattered ganglia; of the two thrusts
of the Tarantula-huntress, one disarms and the other paralyses. And so
with the others: that is to say, the instinct is directed each time by
the secrets of the nervous organism. There is a perfect harmony between
the operation and the patient's anatomy.
The single stroke of the Scolia is no less wonderful than the repeated
strokes of the Ammophila. Each has her appointed game and each slays it
by a method as rational as any that our own science could invent. In
the presence of this consummate knowledge, which leaves us utterly
confounded, what a poor argument is that of 1 + 1 = 2! And what is that
progress by units to us? The universe is mirrored in a drop of water;
universal logic flashes into sight in a single sting.
Besides, push on the pitiful argument. One leads to two, two lead to
three. Granted without dispute. And then? We will accept the Scolia
as the pioneer, the foundress of the first principles of the art. The
simplicity of her method justifies our supposition. She learns her
trade in some way or other, by accident; she knows supremely well how
to paralyse her Cetonia-grub with a single dagger-thrust driven into
the thorax. One day, through some fortuitous circumstance, or rather
by mistake, she takes it into her head to strike two blows. As one is
enough for the Cetonia, the repetition was of no value unless there was
a change of prey. What was the new victim submitted to the butcher's
knife? Apparently, a large Spider, since the Tarantula and the Garden
Spider call for two thrusts. And the prentice Scolia, who used at first
to sting under the throat, had the skill, at her first attempt, to begin
by disarming her adversary and then to go quite low down, almost to the
end of the thorax, to strike the vital point. I am utterly incredulous
as to her success. I see her eaten up if her lancet swerves and hits the
wrong spot. Let us look impossibility boldly in the face and admit that
she succeeds. I then see the offspring, which have no recollection of
the fortunate event save through the belly--and then we are postulating
that the digestion of the carnivorous larva leaves a trace in the memory
of the honey-sipping insect--I see the offspring, I say, obliged to wait
at long intervals for that inspired double thrust and obliged to succeed
each time under pain of death for them and their descendants. To accept
this host of impossibilities exceeds all my faculties of belief. One
leads to two, no doubt; the Ssingle blow of the predatory Wasp will
never lead to the blow twice delivered.
In order to live, we all require the conditions that enable us to live:
this is a truth worthy of the famous axioms of La Palice. (Jacques de
Chabannes, Seigneur de La Palice [circa 1470-1525]), was a French captain
killed at the battle of Pavia. His soldiers made up in his honour a
ballad, two lines of which, translated, run:
Fifteen minutes before he died, He was still alive.
(Hence the French expression, une verite de La Palice, meaning an obvious
truth.--Translator's Note.)
The predatory insects live by their talent. If they do not possess it to
perfection, their race is lost. Hidden in the murk of the past ages, the
argument based upon the non-existence of fossil instinct is no better
able than the others to withstand the light of living realities; it
crumbles under the stroke of fate; it vanishes before a La Palice
platitude.