Origin of Species Variorum

place in nature, these facts cease to be strange, or .. might even have been anticipated.

We can understand how it is that such harmonious beauty generally prevails throughout nature. That there are exceptions according to our ideas of beauty, no one will doubt who will look at some of the venomous snakes, at some fish, and at certain hideous bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours and other ornaments to the males, but sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies, and a few other animals. With birds it has often rendered the voice of the male .. musical to the female, as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit have been rendered conspicuous by gaudy colours in contrast with the green foliage, in order that the flowers might be easily seen, visited, and fertilised by insects, and the ... seeds disseminated by birds. ↑ .. Lastly, some living objects have become beautiful through mere symmetry of growth.

As natural selection acts by competition, it renders the inhabitants of each country perfect only in relation to the other 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; and 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 often causing the bees 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