to reproductive powers, but all of those that are getting on well in the 

 world have among their offspring some that cannot reproduce, and help- 

 ers are consequently numerous. 



About this time the paupers are established as a distinct variety. 

 Sick and discouraged with the unsuccessful battle of lile, they are more 

 or less tolerated in the affluent families ol their neighbors. But when 

 they have recovered their bodily strength, they have not also regained 

 their mental balance. They have become accustomed to a life of toler- 

 ated dependence; so they live in the nest and lay eggs to be reared by 

 their industrious neighbors. Sometimes the imposition becomes too 

 great for good nature to stand and there may be a terrible slaughter of 

 the innocent paupers and their offspring. The ones however that most 

 nearly resemble the useful members of the community escape destruction 

 and thus are established the Cuckoo- Bees, their similation of virtue being 

 ever the closer as indignation increases at their vice. 



The varieties become extremely numerous; many of them however 

 becoming rapidly extinct. At first in all families where there are help- 

 ers there are almost or perhaps quite as many undeveloped males: but 

 this being for bees, a hurtful variation the tendency of natural selection 

 is to their diminution. On the whole those families are the most suc- 

 ( essful in which there are the largest number of undeveloped females. 



All this time experience is being gathered in the mothers and differ- 

 entiated and stored in their systems, to re-appear as instinct and intelli- 

 gence in the offspring. 



Sometimes the most affluent families come to want, and perfect fe- 

 males are dwarfed in their reproductive organs by scarcity of food and 

 are only capable of being helpers. 



From all this diversity there is at last a type evolved which is on 

 the whole the best for the majority of the bees. This type is one in- 

 volving a degree of imperfection in the reproductive organs of all offspring 

 unless highly stimulating food in large quantity is supplied from a very 

 early stage of growth. Thus the normal product is simply a helper and 

 the number of males and females in proportion to the number of helpers 

 and the food supply is a matter entirely under the control, not of chance 

 nor of the mother, but of the community. This then, I think, is the 

 foundation of the Hive-Bee family, the highest type of the flying Il\- 

 nienoptera. 



As instinct enlarges and intelligence increases, the helpers take 

 more and more upon themselves the care of the household. They be- 

 come pre-eminently the workers, and their officious interference is con- 

 tinually stopping the mother-bee's toil, and stuffing her with the best 



