ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEX IN SOCIAL INSECTS. 197 



workers differ, Init also all the wonderful and appropriate instincts 

 which lead the nursing bees to feed and treat tlie different larvfc in 

 tlie manner approjiriate to each, have all alike been produced by 

 minute accidental variation in tlie mici'oscopic structure of tlie 

 l)article of proto})lasni within an egg-tube of the ovary of a bee ! The 

 faith which can accejjt such a dogma seems to us a faith which can 

 move mountains of intellectual perception and cast them into the sea — 

 m mare ignorantiae — of incoherent imagination." 



Now we feel inclined for a little way through this paragraph to go 

 with Dr. Mivart, and as the destructive criticism goes on we feel satis- 

 tied that he must have another explanation to offer us which is based 

 less on theory and more on fact. Our expectations, however, are 

 doomed to disappointment, for although the habits of bees are tolerably 

 well known. Dr. Mivart sto])S suddenly at the end of the above quota- 

 tion and passes to frogs. We have more than once stated that destruc- 

 tive criticism of a theory is very easy, but we have always added that it 

 is more difficult to find something better to put in place of what you 

 attempt to destroy ; this Dr. Mivart evidently finds, for he holds up 

 Professor Weismann's theory to ridicule, without showing a single 

 detail in which the theory fails, or attempting to give a single word of 

 explanation as to how the facts dealt with are to be explained. No 

 one can know better than Dr. Mivart that a theory is not a statement of 

 facts, but is simply put forward as a means by which facts can be 

 explained. Where, we would ask Dr. Mivart, would the science of 

 physics 1)6 now if the various theories in physical science — which all 

 served their turn and helped to advance the study — had not been put 

 forward ? 



The rest of Dr. Mivart's paper does not bear directly on our special 

 branch of the subject, so, as it is not our intention to go into the 

 general subject of heredity, we will conclude by pointing out 

 that, according to this writer, all the explanations of our great philo- 

 sophical naturalists have so far been futile, that when we seek to 

 " explain the entire activities of a living organism by the functions of 

 its ' cells ' each ' cell ' so considered becomes but an entire organism 

 ' writ small ' ; so every ' biophor,' ' idiosome,' ' gemmule,' etc., of a 

 * cell ' becomes the ' cell ' again ' writ -small.' Biophors, ttc, are terms 

 for mental images of material particles which only differ from bodies 

 perceptible to the senses because they are supposed to be exceedingly 

 minute. They are, therefore, necessarily incapable of making us under- 

 stand the vital, immaterial activities of entire organisms, and the use 

 of them amounts to an attempt to make imaginary representations of 

 things perceptible to the senses, serve as representative of things 

 imperceptiljle to the senses, and therefore essentially incajjable of any 

 such representation." That is, we take it, that we are deceiving our- 

 selves with the infinitesimal nature of the atoms which form the 

 ground- work of our speculations, and therefore these are foredoomed to 

 failure. Instead of this Dr. Mivart sees in living things " a materia 

 organism and an immaterial energy," and this energy is sufficient to 

 explain all the body's activities. " Such an individual and individuat- 

 ing material energy cannot, of course, be pictured ])y the imagination, 

 Init that is no bar to its intellectual apprehension." Which we would 

 ask is the more tangible ? To understand gemmules, Inophors, A'c, in 

 which we have to imagine such an " immense number of minute parts 



