126 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



that is rarely possible under the each-for-himself regime. The 

 existence of a society that has even the beginning of success serves 

 automatically as a shield for variations that might arise, but could 

 not jK)ssibly continue in the conditions of individualistic life. There 

 are oddities and whimsicalities among social animals that are 

 hardly conceivable under non-social conditions. Thus the soldier 

 termites have very strong mandibles which are useful in the fray, 

 but make it impossible for their possessors to chew the wood which 

 forms the dry-as-dust diet of these spartan insects. So the soldiers 

 have to be fed by the workers. Among the so-called Honey-ants 

 of Texas and Colorado, which usually frequent places with prolonged 

 periods of ckought, there is a well-known and indescribably quaint 

 custom of storing honey-dew. The foragers are unable to make 

 receptacles of any sort, so they discharge their drops of dew into 

 the mouth and crop of some of their stay-at-home fellows. The crop 

 becomes so much dilated with the honey-dew that the abdomen 

 becomes tense and spherical like a yellow currant. These individuals, 

 called "repletes", who "assume the role of animated demijohns or 

 carboys, are quite unable to walk, and therefore suspend themselves 

 by their claws from the ceilings of the nest chambers". When an 

 ordinary worker is hungry it strokes the head of a replete and 

 receives by regurgitation a droplet of the honey-dew collected in 

 days of plent\'. Only in a society could such an extraordinary 

 specialisation exist. 



7. Great advantages are usually taxed; great steps of progress are 

 usually dogged by risks. Tennyson saw "Reversion ever dragging 

 Evolution in the mud". So it is with the highly evolved social 

 habit, both in animal and in man. The first risk is that of losing 

 the independent all-roundness of the each-for-himself type. Self- 

 subordination may go too far, and the division of labour may result 

 in types that are not viable except under the a?gis of the society. 

 The big-jawed soldiers among the termites have to be fed from 

 the surplus that the workers can afford. The animated honeypots 

 that hang themselves up on the roof of the nest of the sweet-toothed 

 ant of Texas are doubtless very useful, but though they are called 

 "repletes" they cannot be said to live a full life. The big-eyed drones 

 of the beehive have wrll-developed wings and wing-muscles, and 

 are far from inactive. Rut they have no arrangement for collecting 

 jK)llcn; their tongue is very short; they have no wax-glands; and 

 they are unable to collect food for themselves. They will thus starve 

 rather than forage. We do not blame them for trading on their 

 masculinity, any more than we would give them a minus mark for 

 not having a sting, which, being a transformed ovipositor, is always 

 confined to females; we are simply pointing out that they could not 

 survive if they were not members of a community. They are danger- 

 posts on the highway of sociality. In the same way the bloated 



