142 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [CH. 



as elsewhere the real bond is an impalpable one- 

 mutual dependence. 



The communities of ants and bees are undoubted 

 individuals. Wheeler in a recent paper (18) has 

 abundantly justified this view from a somewhat 

 different standpoint. Here I can only say that if 

 the ideas and definitions put forward in Chap. I are 

 accepted, their individuality is beyond dispute. In 

 spite of space, I cannot refrain from giving one 

 example of the lengths to which internal differ- 

 entiation of parts can go in such apparently loose- 

 connected wholes. In several species of ants there 

 are special workers whose duty it is to imbibe honey 

 till their fair round bellies are drum-tight, then to 

 suspend themselves, a row of living jars, from the 

 roof, and there to wait until their store is needed by 

 the colony and they are taken down and tapped for 

 general consumption. 



One interesting property gained by brains and 

 sense-organs : organisms possessing them can easily 

 enter into more than one individuality. The Yucca 

 and its moth, for instance, constitute a definite 

 individual that works for its own perpetuation. But 

 their time of contact is a short one ; and there is 

 nothing to prevent the moth from entering into re- 

 lations with some other flower for the sake of food (in 

 return of course fertilizing the flower) and so forming 

 together with it another " whole with inter-dependent 



