62 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol.1, 



itance of acquired characters, especially as Weismann and his fol- 

 lowers regard the social insects as demonstrating the non-trans- 

 missibility of somatogenic traits. In establishing this view and 

 the all-sufficiency of natural selection to which it leads, Weismann 

 seems to me to have slurred over the facts. While he admits that 

 the workers may lay eggs, and that these may produce male off- 

 spring capable of fertilizing females, he nevertheless insists that 

 this is altogether too infrequent to influence the germ-plasm of 

 the species. I venture to maintain, on the contrary that fertile 

 workers occur much more frequently in all groups of social 

 insects than has been generally supposed. As this fertility is 

 merely a physiological state it has been overlooked. Marchal 

 has shown how readily the workers of the social wasps assume 

 this state, and the same is true of the honey-bees, especially of 

 certain races like the Egyptians and Cyprians (Apis mellifica, fasci- 

 ata and cypria) . In the hives of these insects fertile workers are 

 either always present or make their appearance within a few days 

 after the removal of the queen. Among termites fertile soldiers 

 have been observed by Grassi and Sandias and fertile w^orkers 

 by Silvestri. Among ants fertile, or gynsecoid, workers occur so 

 frequently as to lead to the belief that they must be present in all 

 populous colonies. Their presence is also attested by the produc- 

 tion of considerable numbers of males in old and queenless com- 

 munities. In artificial nests Wasmann, (1891) , Miss Fielde (1905) 

 and myself have found egg-laying w^orkers in abundance. 



Now as the males that develop from worker eggs are perfectly 

 normal, and in all probability as capable of mating as those de- 

 rived from the eggs of queens, we are bound to conclude, especially 

 if we adopt the theory of heredity advocated by Weismann him- 

 self, that the characters of the mother (in this case the worker) 

 may secure representation in the germ-plasm of the species. 

 Weismann is hardly consistent in denying the probability of such 

 representation, for when he is bent on elaborating the imaginary 

 structure of the germ-plasm he makes this substance singularly 

 retentive of alteration by amphimixis, but when he is looking for 

 facts to support the all-sufficiency of natural selection the germ- 

 plasm becomes remarkably difficult of modification by anything 

 except this eliminative factor. Certainly the simplest and direct- 

 est method of securing a representation of the worker characters 

 in the germ-plasm would be to get them from the worker itself 

 that has survived in the struggle for existence, rather than through 



