ECOLOGICAL 119 



(c) Among the other general features of the instinctive society 

 is the widespread division of labour which occurs at all grades. 

 In the six unrelated families of social beetles there is, as Wheeler 

 has shown in detail, no division of labour except that between males 

 and females; and in some types the males are almost as devotedly 

 parental as their mates. At the other extreme are some of the 

 termite societies which have eight different castes, each represented 

 by dimorphic sexes, giving a total of sixteen different forms. The 

 division of labour has, of course, reference to the two perennial 

 problems of hunger and love, or nutrition and reproduction; and 

 what is attained in instinctive societies by variational and modifi- 

 cational polymorphism is secured in intelligent societies, such as the 

 beaver village, the winter wolf-pack, and the troop of monkeys, by 

 intelligent devices. There are many quaint details in the solution 

 of the nutritive and reproductive problems. Thus, as regards 

 nutrition, many wasps illustrate a curious process which Roubaud 

 calls "oecotrophobiosis" and Wheeler "trophallaxis". When the 

 mother in the case of solitary wasps, and the worker in the case of 

 social wasps, is transferring to the grub some pabulum such as a 

 chewed insect, she receives in return a drop of elixir which is secreted 

 from the enlarged salivary glands of the larva. It means so much 

 to the workers, as a douceur for their industry, that Roubaud goes 

 the length of regarding the attainment of the luxury as a factor in 

 the elaboration of the society. Then, as regards reproductive details, 

 what could be quainter than the reserve "kings" and "queens" 

 among the termites, castes of complementary reproductive indi- 

 viduals which can be utilised in replacing the functional royal pair 

 if need arises? 



To these two general features of prolonged reproductivity and 

 division of labour (giving place to what are surely nearer intelligent 

 devices and plasticity), there may be added a sensitiveness in kin- 

 recognition, and also a readiness, especially in instinctive societies, 

 to be of assistance to those of the same community. Thus it is the 

 rule in the ant community that an individual with food must feed the 

 hungry on demand. In many cases, again, there is some particular 

 organismal quality which gives the societary type an advantage 

 over individualist rivals. Thus ants have their poisonous formic 

 acid; bees have their wax; termites have in their food-canal an 

 indispensable and invaluable contingent of partner Inf usorians which 

 make the wood-dust food more available. So, at higher levels, the 

 rooks and the monkeys are more effective in their sociality because 

 of their large vocabulary of significant calls. According to von Frisch, 

 the success of a beehive depends to some extent on the bee-language, 

 which takes the form of a quick excited dance on the honeycomb, 

 exhibited by the worker-bee when she returns to the hive after 

 finding rich treasure of nectar or of pollen. And the finesse of 



