96 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



adaptations of living nature have much in common with those 

 which are presented by a hive of bees. 



Some of the members of the floating community known as a 

 siphonophore have mouths and stomachs which furnish an 

 abundant supply of food for all ; and this food flows through 

 tubes to the places where it is needed, as water flows to all the 

 houses in a city. Other members of the community do the 

 swimming for the whole, and are especially fitted for this work, 

 which calls for an abundant supply of food to replenish the 

 energy expended in swimming. As they have no mouths they 

 take no food for themselves, but their bodies are supplied with 

 branches from the main canal, distributed, like blood-vessels, in 

 the course of the muscles. Other mouthless members are con- 

 verted into protecting lids, and others into long poisonous arms for 

 destroying the prey or for repelling enemies. Others form floats 

 from which the whole hangs suspended in the water, while still 

 others are sexual, male or female, and carry on the work of 

 reproduction. 



A colony of siphonophores is both a community and a unit ; 

 for while the members are, to a certain degree, independent, they 

 all work together for the common good, and find all the condi- 

 tions for perfect life nowhere but in the community. A hive of 

 bees is, also, a unit ; for while each bee is able to live an in- 

 dependent life, the welfare of all depends upon the integrity of 

 the community, although there is no physical continuity between 

 its members, as there is in a siphonophore. A hive of bees has 

 been called a " state " to distinguish it from communities like the 

 siphonophore, in which the bond of union between the members 

 is organic. As all the members of the siphonophore-community 

 are physically bound together by structural continuity, into an or- 

 ganic unit, it is not possible to prove that some influence does not 

 pass from the bodies of those which are specialized for the capture 

 or the digestion of food, or from the bodies of these which are 

 specialized for swimming, to the germ-cells in the bodies of 

 those which are specialized for reproduction ; but the history of 

 the sterile workers among the bees shows that there is no need 

 for imagining the transmission of any such influence, for there is 

 no organic connection between the bodies of the workers and the 



