Care of the Young in the Animal Kingdom. 157 



men would be able to acquire only after years of 

 observation and study. Yet, in ants every single worker 

 is endowed with it as soon as she is drawn from her 

 cocoon and has become dry. This is because their 

 sagacity is instinctive, essentially different from intel- 

 ligence and reflection. Ants are in their every action 

 guided directly by sensitive perceptions, not by intel- 

 lectual ideas. The enigma, therefore, is satisfactorily 

 explained by the innate adaptation of their sensitive 

 cognition and appetite, whereas the hypothesis of ani- 

 mal intelligence is unable to offer any solution. 



But now we come to the most puzzling and mys- 

 terious question in the nursing of ants, namely, the 

 influence of the education of the young larvae on the 

 development of different castes in ant-states. Science 

 has but just now begun to divine the mysteries hidden 

 here ; but it is still far from having fathomed their 

 depths. We shall very briefly place before our readers 

 what is certain or at least probable concerning this 

 matter. It will fully suffice to prove, that the nursing 

 instincts of ants, bees and termites are far superior 

 to those of birds and mammals. 



According to the older opinion, thus far commonly 

 held, and based chiefly on Dzierzon's classical obser- 

 vations on bees, the sex of their posterity is determined 

 by the instinctive choice of the oviparous queen, and 

 not by the workers that rear the brood. Because it 

 has been observed, that with ants, bees and wasp 1 ? 

 unfertilized eggs produce males only, it is assumed 

 that also the normal males of these social insects are 

 always hatched from unfertilized eggs. The queen, 

 when depositing her eggs, is supposed, by either open- 



