THE EVOLUTION OF SEX 33 



a few eggs. At the same time the male sets free the 

 sperm, thereby increasing the chance that some of the 

 spermatozoa will reach the egg. 



In bees, the sexual life of the hive is highly special- 

 ized. Mating never occurs in the hive, but when the 

 young queen takes her nuptial flight she is followed by 

 the drones that up to this have led an indolent and use- 

 less life in the colony. Mating occurs high in the air. 

 The queen goes to the new nest and is followed by a 

 swarm of workers who construct for her a new home. 

 Here she remains for the rest of her life, fed and cared 

 for by the workers, who give her the most assiduous 

 attention — an attention that might be compared to 

 courting were it not that the workers are not males 

 but only immature females. The occurrence of these 

 instincts in the workers that never leave or rarely at 

 least leave offspring of their own is a special field of 

 heredity about which we can do little more than specu- 

 late. This much, however, may be hazarded. The 

 inheritance of the queen and of the worker is the same. 

 We know from experimental evidence that the amount 

 of food given to the young grub, when it hatches from 

 the egg, is the external agent that makes the grub a 

 queen or a worker. In the worker the sex glands are 

 little developed. Possibly their failure to develop may 

 in part account for the different behavior of the workers 

 and of the queen. I shall devote a special chapter to 

 this question of the influence of the secretions of the 

 sex glands or reproductive organs on the character of 

 the body. We shall see that in some animals at least 

 an important relation exists between them. 



In the spiders the mating presents a strange spectacle. 



