222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



active life and abundant nutrition. Insect larvae, for instance, simply 

 grow during their active feeding-stage. New development only be- 

 gins during the inactive pupal stage, in which the tissue formed dur- 

 ing the larval stage is modified and transformed. After the insect 

 becomes again active, as the imago, no further development of special 

 importance takes place ; and it would appear that, if the larval stage 

 is not allowed its full period or its complete course of nutrition, the 

 pupal development is checked at an imperfect stage, and the imago 

 remains immature. 



Such is evidently the case in bee communities. The division of 

 the community into males, queen, and workers seems less an operation 

 of natural selection than of intelligent selection. It is a matter of 

 choice among the workers whether any female larva shall develop into 

 a worker or a queen. By giving more room for growth, and more and 

 better food, they can produce a queen from any female larva chosen at 

 will. By contracting the growth-space and diminishing the food, the 

 power of development is checked, and the insect, in its pu])al stage, 

 becomes incapable of developing sexual organs and powers. 



Thus in every female larva it seems evident that innate powers to 

 become either queen or worker exist. The queen is the higher phase 

 of development, but in attaining this stage the worker stage must 

 be passed through. Why does it not become apparent ? This is not 

 difficult to understand, since a similar phenomenon is of very common 

 occurrence. It is simply slurred over in a rapid course of development. 

 The sexual organs begin to unfold, and in so doing exhaust the nutri- 

 ment and the life-energy which would be needed for the full unfold- 

 ment of the worker organs. Thus the superior force checks the infe- 

 rior, and the innate tendency to develop into a worker is overcome by 

 the activity of a more energetic innate tendency. Where the latter 

 remains aborted the worker tissues fully develop, and with them the 

 worker instincts, since every stage of structural development seems 

 accompanied by its peculiar instincts, as if tissue dominated instinct. 



In the case of the ant we have closely similar phenomena. Here 

 there is no satisfactory evidence of intelligent selection, though many 

 observers believe that it exists. So far as we know, however, chance 

 decides whether the larva shall have food enough to carry it to one or 

 other of the worker stages, or to the queen stage. Thus numerous 

 individuals of each stage appear. But the two or more worker castes 

 are not completely separated, since intermediate forms exist, sufficient 

 to make a line of insensible gradation from one form to the other or 

 others. Here, then, we have a complete line of development, reach- 

 ing from the germ to the queen, but checked at various stages, in 

 which nutrition becomes active and secondary adaptations appear. 

 These secondary adaptive features have undoubtedly become part of 

 the direct line of structural unfoldment. But, as soon as a higher 

 phase of structure begins to unfold, these lower conditions of tissue 



