So, once more, with the immense tribes of solitary Bees, Wasps, and Spheges. I shall mention but one example, from my own experience. It is the Dirt Dauber (_Pelopoeus flavipes_) of North America. The female of this elegant fly, when about to lay her eggs, builds up a tubular nest of cells with fine mud, which she makes by mingling and kneading road-dust with her saliva. Each tube consists of several cells, separated by transverse partitions of the mortar; and in each, before she closes it up, she lays a single egg, which she then covers with spiders which are to constitute the food of the grub when hatched, and to last it during the whole period of its larval growth. Dead spiders would not do, for their bodies would either dry up, or become putrescent long before the young grub could devour them. On the other hand, if a number of these fierce and carnivorous creatures were immured, in health, they would soon destroy one another. To obviate this, the parent-fly ingeniously stings every spider just sufficiently to paralyse, without killing it. Thus nearly a score of living spiders are packed away in a cell scarcely larger than a lady's thimble; and thus they remain fresh and succulent food for the larva, not only till it is ready to begin its eating task, but even to the close of its repast. I think this a particularly instructive example. The _Pelopoeus_ was indubitably created; for it exists. As indubitably it was created in some stage of its cyclical life-history. If as an imago, then I press the argument from the necessity of its previous metamorphoses. If as a pupa, or a larva, or an egg, each of these conditions of life was entirely passed as an inmate of the mud-walled cottage; which, cottage was built and stocked with food by the industry and skill of the parent-fly. The grub could not have lived without the stored spiders; the spiders could not have been stored (_normally_) without the agency of the fly. In some other instances the connexion between germ and parent is patent to the eye. The beautiful Star-fish, _Cribella_, passes through all its infant metamorphoses, changing from an ovum to an Infusory, thence to a Pluteus (or what is analogous to it), thence to a Star-fish, all in the marsupium provided for the occasion, by the drawing together of the arms of the patient mother. The female _Brachionus_ carries its deposited eggs attached to the hinder part of its body; and thus we can trace, through their transparent coats, the gradual development of the organs of the embryo,--the coloured eye, the rotatory cilia, the complex mastax,--and even detect the vigorous movements of these and other parts, while yet carried hither and thither by the parent. [Illustration: FEMALE BRACHIONUS, WITH EGGS.]