Origin of Species… • 15. Recapitulation and conclusion (25)

≣  •  D a r w i n  (1 8 5 9,  1 8 7 2⁶)  •  15.  R e c a p i t u l a t i o n  a n d  c o n c l u s i o n  •  √it

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As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the inhabitants of each country only in relation to their co-inhabitants; so that we need feel no surprise at the species of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been created and specially adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee’s own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters; at ichneumonidæ feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars; or at other such cases. The wonder indeed is, on the theory of natural selection, that more cases of the want of absolute perfection have not been detected.

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[]  C h.  D a r w i n,  ‹T h e  O r i g i n  o f  S p e c i e s›,  J o h n  M u r r a y,  1 8 7 2⁶.
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