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his capacity, and that is precisely the kind of male with which she is supplied, How she has obtained such a male, or, conversely, how such a male has obtained such a female, are important but insufficiently noticed elements in that great question of the day, which fills all our thoughts.

The whole subject of these apparently and so-called degraded males is here open before us, and it offers a wide field for observation and reflection: and the very first reflection that occurs to us is this, that, a priori, we have no more right to talk of degraded males than we have to talk of exalted females. What we actually see before us is a male exactly suited to the wants of the female, and able to provide her with the only secretion in the world which will enable her to continue the race, and vice versa. The terrible nuptials of the Queen Bee, the dying sufferings of the selected husband, the frightful slaughter of the rejected males, is a story that gives rise to some painful thoughts—thoughts which the rotifer world and its mouthless mules at first sight seem sadly to confirm. For if it be true that "degradation" can bring mules to such a pass, why then we see what a future may possibly be in store for other animals—for animals which are now endowed with higher powers. The bees, the ants, and the rotifers are not the only animals among whose ranks the main body of females surpass, or have a tendency to surpass, in pelf-restraint, intelligence, and industry, the main body of the males, and if there be any substance in the suggestion that degradation is a part of evolution, and that evolution is the principle by which "life changes" and "life progress" are conducted, why, then, a hideous future may be in store for some of the more highly-organised races; when appetite becomes the ruling force, it is developed at the expense of intelligence, and the male must inevitably degrade, and must either drag the female with him, and go obliterate both, or sink below her in intellectual capacity

But here I must confess myself altogether a heretic, and for my own part I believe that, so far as the question before us goes, neither degradation nor evolution had anything to do with the present state of the bee or the rotifer world. I am of the mind of Falconbridge as to his parentage. "Evolution could do well," but it could not get a suitable male fora female without the aid of an outer independent and far higher principle than that which is involved in the word development. To me the male rotifer is what it is, that is to say, a diminutive spermatic bag, simply because it was of the utmost importance to the race that the male should have one object in life, and only one, and that it should not waste time in seeking and devouring food in on hour when the continuance of the race requires that it should be engaged otherwise. The "replenishment" of the earth, the multiplication of stock, runs like a marvellous thread of exquisite and infinitely varied contrivance through the whole series of living beings, and the microscope greatly intensifies the marvel. The difficulties which lie in the way of treating, without offence, this subject of male and female has made it popularly a neglected topic, and thus the world at large has missed the strongest argument which, to my mind, there is against