160 Chapter IV. 



males. 1 This phenomenon manifests the marvelous 

 sagacity and quasi-intelligent plasticity of animal 

 instinct, which can hardly be styled "automatism." 

 Neither can it be identified with intelligence properly 

 so-called, for this would suppose rational knowledge 

 of the internal laws governing the growth of the ant- 

 organism, a knowledge far surpassing even the intelli- 

 gence of man and entirely beyond the reflections and 

 experience of ants. Only the appropriate disposition 

 of their sensitive cognition and appetite can account 

 for the fact, that the perception of a given want is 

 followed by a corresponding modification in their 

 nursing instinct, by which the defect in question is 

 remedied. 



According to Dzierzon's views, which we men- 

 tioned above, it is the oviparous instinct of the queens, 

 that controls the sex of the bee developed from a 

 given egg; in this supposition the worker-bees are 

 assigned a merely indirect influence. Of late, how- 

 ever, another theory on the differentiation of castes 

 in bees has been advanced, which assigns to the nurs- 

 ing instincts of the workers a far more extensive 

 sphere of action. The originator was an Italian priest, 

 Lanfranchi by name, who published it in 1894 in the 

 "Apicoltore." In Germany it was developed and 

 confirmed by new experiments, principally by Ferd. 

 Dickel, 2 the editor of the "Noerdlinger Bienenzeitung." 



*) More recently H. Reichenbach has published some observations 

 (in "Biol. Centralbl.," 1892, p. 461 ff.) which seem to prove, that with 

 Lasius niger the parthenogenetic eggs laid by workers may give origin 

 also to workers. But further confirmation will be required before 

 accepting this statement. In North America Prof. W. M. Wheeler has 

 lately published some interesting reports on parthenogenesis in ants. 



2 ) "Das Princip der Geschlechtsbildung bei Thieren geschlechtlicher 

 Fortpflanzung, entwickelt auf Grundlage meiner Bienenforschungen." 

 Noerdlingen, 1898; cf. especially p. 20. 



