SOME STRANGE MARRIAGE-CUSTOMS 291 



no less true of the psychical, for with this change of diet 

 the behaviour of the insect, throughout its whole life, 

 is most profoundly changed. If the pollen-basket is 

 wanting, no less so are the instinctive actions associated 

 with its use ; if the genital organs are atrophied, so also 

 are the instinctive acts associated therewith. This nexus 

 between instinct and structure is not to be lost sight of. 



How — and the question has often been asked — are the 

 experiences of the infertile females, the workers, trans- 

 mitted to the germ-plasm ? For the workers, it has 

 been contended, being sterile, are incapable of handing 

 on such acquirements : this is so. These workers hold 

 the same position in regard to the species that structures 

 essential to well-being hold in regard to the individual. 

 These last are not under the control of the individual, 

 but are determined by a plus or minus quality in its germ- 

 plasm. The worker-bees are products of the germ-plasm, 

 committed to the care of the queens. Any strain, so 

 to speak, of that germ-plasm which gives rise to defective 

 workers brings about its own extinction, or elimination, 

 sooner or later. Any strain of germ-plasm which con- 

 tains, so to speak, a spark of that quality which in the 

 individual is expressed by intelligent behaviour, will 

 gain advantages in the struggle for existence. 



The complex, the extraordinarily complex, behaviour of 

 the worker-bees on any interpretation is still mysterious. 

 This interpretation can be tested only by a reference to 

 the life-history of other social-bees which have attained 

 to a less complexity. This shows us that the sterile worker 

 is not to be regarded as a newly-evolved type so much as 

 an arrested stage of a more complete ancestral condition, 

 and the fact that the worker is potentially a queen is 

 further evidence of this. 



