324 FOUNDATIONS OF BIOLOGY 



taken for Bees, and avoided accordingly by human and 

 presumably by other enemies also. (Fig. 174.) 



Now, what is the significance of such phenomena of animal 

 coloration and form which are so universal in nature? The 

 problem appears by no means so simple to-day as it did a 

 generation ago, and biologists are not so ready to interpret 

 individual cases as 'protective,' 'aggressive,' 'alluring,' 

 'confusing,' or 'mimetic.' But it is beyond dispute that no- 

 where else is the plasticity adaptability of organisms 

 better illustrated, and that, taken by and large, such adap- 

 tations are of crucial importance in the life and strife of 

 species. Whatever may be the origin of adaptive variations, 

 natural selection is undoubtedly responsible for their ac- 

 cumulation and preservation. 



THE LEGS OF THE HONEY BEE. From time immemorial 

 the Honey Bee (Apis mellifica) has been the subject of wonder 

 and study, and to-day there is no more interesting and instruc- 

 tive example of adaptation than that exhibited by the Bee in 

 relation to the highly specialized community life of the hive. 



An average hive comprises some 65,000 Bees of which one 

 is a QUEEN, several hundred are DRONES, and the rest WORK- 

 ERS. The queen is the only fertile female and accordingly 

 she is the mother of nearly all the other members of the hive. 

 Throughout her life of about three years she is tended and 

 fed by her numerous offspring. The drones, or males, con- 

 tribute nothing to the life of the hive in which they live, but 

 at the swarming of the Bees, one of them mates with a 

 virgin queen, which thenceforth becomes the queen of a new 

 hive. Thus the queen and the drones represent an adapta- 

 tion of the colony to communal life a physiological di- 

 vision of labor in the hive which involves a specialization 

 of a class solely for reproduction, while the daily work and 

 strife of the colony devolves upon the workers. The latter 



