236 LIFE AND HABIT. 



I admit that, under normal treatment, none of the 

 above-mentioned potential memories would be kindled 

 into such a state of activity that action would follow 

 upon them, until the creature had attained a more or 

 less similar condition to that in which its parent was 

 when these memories were active within its mind : but 

 the essence of the matter is, that these larvas have been 

 treated abnormally, so that if they do not die, there is 

 nothing for it but that they must vary. One cannot 

 argue from the normal to the abnormal. It would not, 

 then, be strange if the potential memories should (owing 

 to the margin for premature or tardy development which 

 association admits) serve to give the puzzled larvae a 

 hint as to the course which they had better take, or that, 

 at any rate, it should greatly supplement the instruction 

 of the " nurse " bees themselves by rendering the larvae 

 so, as it were, inflammable on this point, that a spark 

 should set them in a blaze. Abortion is generally pre- 

 mature. Thus the scars referred to in the last chapter 

 as having appeared on the children of men who had 

 been correspondingly wounded, should not, under normal 

 circumstances, have appeared in the offspring till the 

 children had got fairly near the same condition gener- 

 ally as that in which their fathers were when they were 

 wounded, and even then, normally, there should have 

 been an instrument to wound them, much as their 

 fathers had been wounded. Association, however, does 

 not always stick to the letter of its bond. 



The line, again, might certainly be taken that the 

 difference in structure and instincts between neuter and 

 fertile bees is due to the specific effects of certain food 



