172 INTERNAL ANATOMY OF INSECTS. 
to you what the modern doctrine of physiologists is with 
respect to certain individuals, usually forming the most 
numerous part of the community with insects living in 
society, that were formerly supposed to be ?icuters i or as 
to their sex neither male nor female — that they are in 
almost every instance a kind of abortive females, fed with 
a different and less stimulating food than that appropri- 
ated to those whose ovaries are to be developed, and in 
consequence in most instances incapable of conception ». 
Upon these sterile females, you also heard, devolve in 
general the principal labours of their respective colonies, 
showing the beneficent design of Providence in exempt- 
ing them from sexual cares and desires, and meriting for 
them the more appropriate name, now generally used, of 
ivorkers. The differences in the structure of the female 
bee and the workers were also then accounted for; and 
similar reasoning may be had recourse to with regard to 
those of ants, in which the worker and the female differ 
still more materially. My reason for introducing this 
subject here, is to observe to you that I have some 
grounds for thinking that this system extends further 
than is usually supposed, and that to each species in 
some Coleopterous and other genera there are certain 
individuals intermediate between the male and female ; 
this I seem to have observed more especially in Copris 
and Onthophagus. For in almost every British species 
in my cabinet of these genera I possess such an indivi- 
dual, distinguished particularly by having a horn on the 
head longer than that of the female, but much shorter 
a Vol. II. p. 50, 110—, 118—, 125—, 130—. The neuters of 
the Termites, however, (p. 33.) seem to be a distinct fex, if I may 
so <peak— and to merit that name. 
