INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS. 231 



more reasoning or difference of opinion concerning 

 them. The race, therefore, or species would remain 

 in statu quo till either domesticated, and so brought 

 into contact with new ideas and placed in changed 

 conditions, or put under such pressure, in a wild state, 

 as should force it to further invention, or extinguish it 

 if incapable of rising to the occasion. That instinct 

 and structure may be acquired by practice in one or 

 more generations, and remembered in succeeding ones, 

 is admitted by Mr. Darwin, for he allows (" Origin of 

 Species," p. 206) that habitual action does sometimes 

 become inherited, and, though he does not seem to 

 conceive of such action as due to memory, yet it is 

 inconceivable how it is inherited, if not as the result of 

 memory. 



It must be admitted, however, that when we come 

 to consider the structures as well as the instincts 

 of some of the neuter insects, our difficulties seem 

 greatly increased. The neuter hive-bees have a cavity 

 in their thighs in which to keep the wax, which it is 

 their business to collect; but the drones and queen, 

 which alone bear offspring, collect no wax, and there- 

 fore neither want, nor have, any such cavity. The 

 neuter bees are also, if I understand rightly, furnished 

 with a proboscis or trunk for extracting honey from 

 flowers, whereas the fertile bees, who gather no honey, 

 have no such proboscis. Imagine, if the reader will, 

 that the neuter bees differ still more widely from the 

 fertile ones ; how, then, can they in any sense be said 

 to derive organs from their parents, which not one of 

 their parents for millions of generations has ever had ? 

 Q 



