Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/156



The germ cells accompanying each new soma undergo a series of transformations within the parent body before they themselves are capable of accomplishing their pur- pose. They multiply enornaously. With some animais, only a few of them ever produce new members of the race; but with insects, whose motto is "safety in numbers," each species produces every season a great abundance of new individuals, to the end that the many forces arrayed against them may not bring about their extermination. The world seems full of forces oppos.ed to organized lire. But the truth is, all organization s an opposition to established forces. The reason that the forms of life now existing have held their places in nature is that they have found and perfected wavs and means of opposing, for a time, the forces that tend to the dissipation of energy. i.ife is a revolt against inertia. Those species that have died out are extinct, either because they came to the end of their resources, or because they became so inflexibly adapted to a certain kind-of lire that they were unable to meet the emergency of a change ira the conditions that made this lire possible. Eflïciency ira the ordinary means of living, rather than specialization for a particular way of living, appears to be the best guarantee of continued existence.

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