“The instances are too numerous and too long to quote, but in his ‘Origin of Species’ he describes two which must not be passed over. In one (_coryanthes_) the orchid has its lower lip enlarged into a bucket, above which stand two water-secreting horns. These latter replenish the bucket, from which, when half-filled, the water overflows by a spout on one side. Bees visiting the flower fall into the bucket and crawl out at the spout. By the peculiar arrangement of the parts of the flower, the first bee which does so, carries away the pollen mass glued to his back, and then when he has his next involuntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that second flower and fertilises it. In the other example (_catasetum_), when a bee gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a long delicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the ‘antenna.’ ‘This antenna transmits a vibration to a membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen mass is shot forth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscid extremity to the back of the bee’” (“Genesis of Species,” p. 63). No one can tell a story so charmingly as Mr. Darwin, but I can no more believe that all this has come about without design on the part of the orchid, and a gradual perception of the advantages it is able to take over the bee, and a righteous determination to enjoy them, than I can believe that a mousetrap or a steam-engine is the result of the accumulation of blind minute fortuitous variations in a creature called man, which creature has never wanted either mousetraps or steam-engines, but has had a sort of promiscuous tendency to make them, and was benefited by making them, so that those of the race who had a tendency to make them survived and left issue, which issue would thus naturally tend to make more mousetraps and more steam-engines. Pursuing this idea still further, can we for a moment believe that these additions to our limbs—for this is what they are—have mainly come about through the occasional birth of individuals, who, without design on their own parts, nevertheless made them better or worse, and who, accordingly, either survived and transmitted their improvement, or perished, they and their incapacity together? When I can believe in this, then—and not till then—can I believe in an origin of species which does not resolve itself mainly into sense of need, faith, intelligence, and memory. Then, and not till then, can I believe that such organs as the eye and ear can have arisen in any other way than as the result of that kind of mental ingenuity, and of moral as well as physical capacity, without which, till then, I should have considered such an invention as the steam-engine to be impossible. CHAPTER XIV. MR. MIVART AND MR. DARWIN.