HEREDITY. 463 



some of the neuters have high spherical abdomens, 

 which serve as living reservoirs of honey for the use of 

 the community. In the equally wonderful case of the 

 termites, or so-called 'white ants' (which belong, how- 

 ever, to an entirely different order of insects from the 

 ants and bees), the neuters are blind and wingless, 

 and are divided into soldiers and workers, each class 

 possessing the requisite instincts and structures adapt- 

 ing it for its tasks. Seeing that natural selection can 

 form and maintain the various structures and the ex- 

 ceedingly complicated instincts of ants and bees and 

 wasps and termites in direct defiance of the alleged 

 tendency to use-inheritance, surely we may believe 

 that natural selection, unsupported by use-inheritance, 

 is equally competent for the work of complex or social 

 or mental evolution in the many cases where the strong 

 presumptive evidence cannot be rendered almost in- 

 disputable by the exceptional exclusion of the modified 

 animal from the work of reproduction. 



"Ants and bees seem to be capable of altering their 

 habits and methods of action much as men do. Bees 

 taken to Australia cease to store honey after a few 

 years' experience of the mild winters. Whole com- 

 munities of bees sometimes take to theft, and live by 

 plundering hives, first killing the queen to create dis- 

 may among the workers. Slave ants attend devotedly 

 to their captors and fight against their own species. 

 Forel reared an artificial ant-colony made up of five 

 different and more or less hostile species. Why can- 

 not a much more intelligent animal modify his habits 

 far more rapidly and comprehensively without the aid 

 of a factor which is clearly unnecessary in the case of 

 the more intelligent of the social insects." 



The explanation of this phenomenon will be prob- 



