38 THE CAUSE AND THE CAUSER.

speech, and they must on no account begin to
fight till he had. He then continued—

“But Bumble major’s is not the only explana-
tion of these difficult faets before us. Bumble
minor has another and a far more ingenious one.
He holds that everything in the world has a ten-
dency, whether conscious or not, to work out its
own good. He calls it race-experience, and thinks
it accounts for all that either insect or flowers can
do; and of the existence and importance of such a
power there can be no doubt. But Bumble minor
is honest ; he does not pretend to tell us how the
race-experience of a flower can make it acquainted
with the habits of an insect; only, being confident
of his theory, he is sure it will explain everything
somehow. Gentlemen, let us face this matter,
then, for ourselves. How can a moth’s race-
experience ever make it advantageous to him to
carry about foreign bodies on his proboscis?
He may be unconscious of the presence of one
or two perhaps but the presence of many in-
sures his death, as we have seen to-day, and the
presence of several must be at any rate incon-