88 LIFE OF 



structure has been produced for the good of its possessor. 

 He says plainly that if structures have been created for 

 beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety, that is 

 fatal to his theory. Yet he admits that many structures 

 are of no direct use to their possessors ; but they have 

 been inherited from ancestors to whom they were of use, 

 or they have arisen as correlated changes or in dependence 

 on some other cause, where use and benefit have been 

 primary. 



In dealing with Instinct, we see Darwin personally 

 studying ants and bees in their social habits. The idea 

 of ants making slaves is to him " odious," which we can 

 well understand after his references to slavery in South 

 America. For three years, during June and July, he 

 watched for many hours several ants' nests in Surrey and 

 Sussex to see whether the slaves ever left the nest. One 

 day he witnessed a migration of ants from one nest to 

 another, the masters carefully carrying their slaves in 

 their jaws. Again, he saw a party attempting to carry 

 off slaves, succeeding, however, only in carrying their 

 corpses off for food to the nest. Darwin then dug up 

 a small group of pupae of the slave species from another 

 nest, and put them down near the place of combat. They 

 were eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, " who 

 perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious 

 in their late combat." At the same time the slave-owners 

 were able to distinguish instantly the pupae of another 

 species, showing much terror at sight of them ; yet they 

 ultimately took heart, and carried them off. 



The cell-making instinct of the hive-bee, " the most 

 wonderful of all known instincts," as Darwin terms it, was 



