INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS. 233 



months' time outstrip Mr. Maclaurin in mathematics 

 as much as they did in making honey. It would take 

 a senior wrangler at Cambridge ten hours a day for 

 three years together to know enough mathematics for the 

 calculation of these problems, with which not only every 

 queen bee, but every undergraduate grub, is acquainted 

 the moment it is born." This last statement may be a 

 little too strong, but it will at once occur to the reader, 

 that as we know the bees do surpass Mr. Maclaurin in 

 the power of making honey, they may also surpass him 

 in capacity for those branches of mathematics with 

 which it has been their business to be conversant during 

 many millions of years, and also in knowledge of phy- 

 siology and psychology in so far as the knowledge bears 

 upon the interests of their own community. 



We know that the larva which develops into a 

 neuter bee, and that again which in time becomes a 

 queen bee, are the same kind of larva to start with ; 

 and that if you give one of these larvse the food and 

 treatment which all its foremothers have been accus- 

 tomed to, it will turn out with all the structure and 

 instincts of its foremothers — and that it only fails to 

 do this because it has been fed, and otherwise treated, 

 in such a manner as not one of its foremothers was 

 ever yet fed or treated. So far, this is exactly what we 

 should expect, on the view that structure and instinct j 

 are alike mainly due to memory, or to medicined I 

 memory. Give the larva a fair chance of knowing 

 where it is, and it shows that it remembers by doing 

 exactly what it did before. Give it a different kind of 

 food and house, and it cannot be expected to be any- 



