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Wednesday, March 4th, 1914. 



Mr. G. T. Bethune-Baker, F.L.S., F.Z.S., President, in the 

 chair. 



Election of Fellows. 



Messrs. Wm. ^. von Monte Pendlebury, Broadlands, 

 Shrewsbury, and Keble College, Oxford; Robert Veitch, 

 7 Queen's Crescent, Edinburgh, and Francis Cardew 

 WooDFORDB, B.A., Market Drayton, Salop, were elected 

 Fellows of the Society. 



Exhibitions. 

 Polymorphism in Ants. — Mr. H. Donisthorpe and Mr. 

 W. C. Crawley exhibited a number of polymorphic forms in 

 ants, illustrated by a chart, and read the following notes : — 



For our exhibit to-night we have selected one of the very 

 many interesting problems presented by the study of myrme- 

 cology, namely Polymorphism in Ants. 



For this purpose my colleague Mr. Crawley and I have 

 constructed a chart, chiefly taken from Wheeler, with some 

 additions of our own, to show all the different forms which 

 occur in ants, and to illustrate this chart we have got together 

 from our collections a number of specimens of most of the 

 phases included in it. 



The chief problem of polymorphism is to account for the 

 various worker forms, and those such as the soldier, pseudogyne 

 and ergatogyne, etc., which are intermediate between the 

 worker and female. Weismann believes that the various 

 castes are represented in the egg by corresponding units, 

 fertilisation being the stimulus which calls the female deter- 

 minants into activity, and meagre feeding the stimulus which 

 arouses the worker producing determinants in the young 

 larva from fertilised eggs. This is of course only a restatement 

 of facts as far as they go. 



Herbert Spencer thought that the female castes were not 

 predetermined, but that they were brought about by differences 

 in the feeding. 



Emery seems to think that a worker-like wingless form was 



