90 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIII, 



be interfered with, but it regulates itself; and from the study of just such 

 regulations important insight has accrued to morphology. Will it also be 

 possible to bring about regulations in instinctive processes ? No definite 

 answer can be given to this question at the present time." He goes on to 

 say that if they should prove to be capable of such regulations, the instinctive 

 reactions would present further evidence of the autonomy of living organ- 

 isms. 



It seems to me that there are, especially in the social insects, a few facts 

 which point to such regulations in the sphere of instinct. When, for example, 

 the firstling brood is removed from a queen ant that has just manifested her 

 primary series of instincts, she will proceed to rear another brood, although 

 under normal circumstances she would pass on to the purely secondary 

 series of reactions. In this case the absence of a colony acts as a stimulus 

 to produce a highly adaptive regulation, which is equivalent to a regenera- 

 tion of the colony. If on the other hand the queen ant, wasp, or termite 

 is removed from her colony, some of the remaining workers themselves 

 become gynsecoid and function as substitutional queens, or in bees raise a 

 new queen. A similar regulation of the personnel of the colony is also 

 apparent in other cases, as when strange queens are adopted or the numeri- 

 cal proportions of the different castes are regulated. If we accept Was- 

 mann's view of the production of pseudogynes in Formica nests infested 

 with Lomechusini, the conversion of queen larvae into workers would be a 

 splendid example of regulation. Such facts point to instinct as offering 

 evidence as important as that of ontogeny in support of a vitalistic concep- 

 tion. And even if my interpretation of the pseudogynes as the result of 

 simple neglect and starvation be accepted, we still have an interesting case 

 of regulation, for the pseudogynes of Formica, like the phthisergates of 

 Pheidole instabilis and the mermithergates of Ph. commutata, are the result 

 of a tendency to produce a symmetrical and adaptive whole out of formative 

 materials that have been abnormally depleted, augmented, or disturbed in 

 the course of their development through the action of parasites. 



In concluding this rather long discussion of polymorphism it is hardly 

 necessary to point out that I have added little of constructive value apart 

 from a few suggestions and a clearer definition of some of the problems 

 involved in an extremely intricate subject. If I have succeeded in show- 

 ing that the underlying problem is the same as that of all other biological 

 phenomena, and that the social insects cannot be used to support any of the 

 current mechanical conceptions of development, my object will have been 

 achieved. 



