1884. 103 Trans. N. V. Ac. Set. 



The resignations of Messrs. Chas. A. Nash, T. Wolcott, and 

 Dr. W. G. Wylie, as Resident Members, were then accepted. 

 A paper was read by Mr. E. A. Curley on 



BEES AND OTHER HOARDING INSECTS : THEIR SPECIALIZATIONS INTO 

 MALES, FEMALES, AND WORKERS. 



DISCUSSION. 



The President referred to the many investigations by Darwin and 

 others, in reference to this mysterious action. The subject was by no 

 means exhausted. It seemed probable that the diminution of food, 

 by decreasing the reproductive organs, would tend to result in the 

 decrease of the number of perfect action. In view of the sterility of 

 the neuters, in bees and ants, their reproduction and continuance ap- 

 peared mysterious and unaccountable, unless an extremely artificial 

 condition of society had been reached among them. If the mother 

 could feed the larva in such a way as to incapacitate, intentionally, 

 the greater number of the young, this method would produce the 

 actual result. This could have been reached only by a long and 

 curious process of development. 



In New Mexico occurred the honey ants — those in which the produc- 

 tion of honey was increased. They were fed by the others, grew, and 

 were ultimately and systematically slaughtered as food by the other 

 ants. Twenty-five years ago, he had some of their hives opened and 

 brought them home. These have been since studied by Rev. Mr. 

 McCoOK and others. We cannot reconcile a process like this in har- 

 mony with many known views. 



The sterility of ants and neuters was indeed an utterly incompre- 

 hensible fact. It was possible to imagine that it could be effected by 

 some artificial process, as it were, by a dose of medicine supplied by 

 the mother of the hive, or possibly by some modification of their food. 

 A bridge which fails to cross the stream has no right to exist ; so also, 

 any phenomenon which shows no evidence of derivation from gradual 

 growth of some beneficial influence. 



The increase of food does not, as a rule, increase the fecundity of 

 the plant or animal. A certain narrowness or limitation of food some- 

 times tends far more to increase the rate of reproduction. For exam- 

 ple, in the tropics, the floral beauty is comparatively less prominent 

 than in the temperate zone or far north, because not so dependent 

 upon the co-ordinate work of the insect. Many evidences occur to 

 every biologist to indicate such facts as these, in which the general 

 tendency, explained in the Darwinian hypotheses, is in progress. 



