40 QUEENS SELDOM PRODUCED IN CAPTIVITY. 



come to maturity in my nests, with one exception not 

 a single queen has been produced. 



This was in a nest of Formica fusca^ in which five 

 queens came to maturity. The nest (which, I need 

 hardly say, possessed a queen) had been under observa- 

 tion since April 1879, and the eggs therefore must 

 have been laid in captivity. The nest had been richly 

 supplied with animal food, which may possibly account 

 for the fact. 



It is known that bees, by difference of food, &c., 

 possess the power of obtaining at will from the same 

 eggs either queens or ordinary workers. JNIr. Dewitz,' 

 however, is of opinion that among ants, on the con- 

 trary, the queens and workers are produced from 

 different kinds of eggs. He remarks that it is very 

 difi&cult to understand how the instinct, if it is to be 

 called instinct, which would enable the working ants 

 to make this difference can have arisen. This is no 

 doubt true ; but it seems to me quite as difficult to 

 understand how the queens, which must have originally 

 laid only queen eggs and male eggs, can have come to 

 produce another class. Moreover, however great the 

 difficulty may be to understand how the ants can have 

 learnt to produce queens and workers from one kind of 

 egg, the same difficulty exists almost to the same 

 extent in bees, which, as Mr. Dewitz admits, do possess 

 the power. Moreover, it seems to me very unlikely 

 that the result is produced in one way in the case of 



■ Zeitjw mist. Zool. 1878, p. 101. 



