1884. 103° Trans. N. Y. Ac. Sci. 
The resignations of Messrs. Cuas. A. Nasu, T. WoLcott, and 
Dr. W. G. Wy iz, as Resident Members, were then accepted. 
A paper was read by Mr. E. A. CURLEY on 
BEES AND OTHER HOARDING INSECTS : THEIR SPECIALIZATIONS INTO 
MALES, FEMALES, AND WORKERS. 
DISCUSSION. 
The PRESIDENT referred to the many investigations by DARWINand 
others, in reference to this mysterious action. The subject was by no 
means exhausted. It seemed probable that the diminution of food, 
by decreasing the reproductive organs, would tend to result in the 
decrease of the number of perfect action. In view of the sterility of 
the neuters, in bees and ants, their reproduction and continuance ap- 
peared mysterious and unaccountable, unless an extremely artificial 
condition of society had been reached among them. If the mother 
could feed the larva in such a way as to incapacitate, intentionally, 
the greater number of the young, this method would produce the 
actual result. This could have been reached only by a long and 
curious process of development. 
In New Mexico occurred the honey ants—those in which the produc- 
tion of honey was increased. They were fed by the others, grew, and 
were ultimately and systematically slaughtered as food by the other 
ants. Twenty-five years ago, he had some of their hives opened and 
brought them home. These have been since studied by Rev. Mr. 
McCook and others. We cannot reconcile a process like this in har- 
mony with many known views. 
The sterility of ants and neuters was indeed an utterly incompre- 
hensible fact. It was possible to imagine that it could be effected by 
some artificial process, as it were, by a dose of medicine supplied by 
the mother of the hive, or possibly by some modification of their food. 
A bridge which fails to cross the stream has no right to exist ; so also, 
any phenomenon which shows no evidence of derivation from gradual 
growth of some beneficial influence. 
The increase of food does not, as a rule, increase the fecundity of 
the plant or animal. A certain narrowness or limitation of food some- 
times tends far more to increase the rate of reproduction. For exam- 
ple, in the tropics, the floral beauty is comparatively less prominent 
than in the temperate zone or far north, because not so dependent 
upon the co-ordinate work of the insect. Many evidences occur to 
every biologist to indicate such facts as these, in which the general 
tendency, explained in the Darwinian hypotheses, is in progress. 
