INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS. 239 



of cattle, sheep, and horses ; and it might be presumed 

 that if feasible at an earlier age, it would produce a 

 still more marked effect. We observe that the effect 

 produced is uniform, or nearly so. Suppose mutilation 

 to produce a little more effect than it does, as we might 

 easily do, if cattle, sheep, and horses had been for ages 

 accustomed to a mutilated class living among them, 

 which class had been always a caste apart, and had fed 

 the young neuters from their own bodies, from an early 

 embryonic stage onwards ; would any one in this case 

 dream of advancing the structure and instincts of this 

 mutilated class against the doctrine that instinct is 

 inherited habit ? Or, if inclined to do this, would he 

 not at once refrain, on remembering that the process 

 of mutilation might be arrested, and the embryo be 

 developed into an entire animal by simply treating it 

 in the way to which all its ancestors had been accus- 

 tomed? Surely he would not allow the difficulty 

 (which I must admit in some measure to remain) to 

 outweigh the evidence derivable from these very neuter 

 insects themselves, as well as from such a vast number 

 of other sources all pointing in the direction of instinct 

 as inherited habit. 1 



Lastly, it must be remembered that the instinct to 

 make cells and honey is one which has no very great 

 told upon its possessors. Bees can make cells and 

 honey, nor do they seem to have any very violent 

 objection to doing so ; but it is quite clear that there is 

 nothing in their structure and instincts which urges 

 them on to do these things for the mere love of doing 

 them, as a hen is urged to sit upon a chalk stone, con- 



1 See Appendix. 



