92 NATURAL SCIENCE. Feb., 



difficulty. The fighting instincts are developed to a remarkable 

 degree, while the capacity and inclination for ordinary work have 

 been entirely lost. Is it probable that the parents of the race ever 

 evolved the structures and instincts of the warrior in so pre-eminent 

 a degree — thereby corresponding!}' unfitting themselves for more 

 indispensable functions? If it be alleged that the soldier type was 

 evolved among the males or drones, we must notice that the evolution 

 of heavy heads and of blindness and winglessness would be incon- 

 sistent with fitness for the all-important wedding flight, so essential 

 for the diffusion of the species and its preservation from the evils of 

 continued close interbreeding. Such evolution could apparently only 

 take place in proportion as male functions degenerated and dis- 

 appeared — that is, only as the evolving warrior became a neuter. 



3. Among sundry ants there are three neuter castes — such as 

 workers, warriors, and living honey-pots, or workers, warriors, and 

 "overseers" — and these are quite distinct in structure, functions, and 

 instincts. Were tliree varieties of instinct and organisation present 

 in the original male and female? Will it be suggested that there 

 were double forms of males or females, or that the soldiers, workers, 

 and honey-makers of Myrmecocystus mexicamis are mere gradations ? 



4. The instincts and the emotions, if we may so call them, of 

 neuter bees centre round the queen in an astonishing manner. The 

 evolution of these special instincts would easily commence in fertile 

 daughters who helped the queen-mother at the cost of delay or neglect 

 of their own maternal functions (a step towards the formation of a 

 neuter caste), but could not have been thus completed in the various 

 details of the final stages. Thus, if we allow that the fertile females 

 or queens once loved their rivals as strongly as they now hate them, 

 we cannot also suppose that they encouraged and compelled these 

 rivals to fight till only one of them survived. Females could not 

 imprison both their queen and themselves, nor release themselves 

 only on special and suitable occasions — as is now done by the neuters. 

 Mr. Spencer seeks to explain the "swarming" of bees as a kind of 

 inherited reminiscence of the nuptial flight. But these neuters or 

 workers are imperfectly developed females. If the massacre of the 

 drones was first carried out by queens, whose murderous hatred is 

 now directed solely against their own sex, are we also to believe that 

 a nuptial pursuit of a female originated in fertile females whose frantic 

 jealousy of rivals now leads them to pull down cells to destroy even 

 their own daughters? The queen, part of whose sexual instincts the 

 neuters are supposed to retain, does not pursue another bee — the 

 drones pursue her. Are we to suppose that the imperfect females 

 inherit the instinct of pursuit from the males ? If swarming is really 

 due to an inherited but perverted sexual instinct derived from either 

 parent, why do the neuters carefully abstain from following their 

 queen during the actual nuptial flight ? Why do tliey only swarm — 

 or take abortive nuptial flights, as we are to suppose — on quite a 



