238 LIFE AND HABIT. 



sense of the word, yet every unit or cell of its body 

 may throw off gemmules which may be free to move 

 over every part of the whole organism, and which 

 " natural selection " might in time cause to stray into 

 food which had been sufficiently prepared in the 

 stomachs of the neuter bees. 



I cannot say, then, precisely in what way, but I can 

 see no reason for doubting that in some of the ways 

 suggested above, or in some combination of them, the 

 phenomena of the instincts of neuter ants and bees 

 can be brought into the same category as the instincts 

 and structure of fertile animals. At any rate, I see the 

 great fact that when treated as they have been accus- 

 tomed to be treated, these neuters act as though they 

 remembered, and accordingly become queen bees ; and 

 that they only depart from their ancestral course on 

 being treated in such fashion as their ancestors can 

 never have remembered; also, that when they have 

 been thrown off their accustomed line of thought and 

 action, they only take that of their nurses, who have 

 been about them from the moment of their being 

 deposited as eggs by the queen bee, who have fed them 

 from their own bodies, and between whom and them 

 there may have been all manner of physical and mental 

 communication, of which we know no more than we do 

 of the power which enables a bee to find its way home 

 after infinite shifting and turning among flowers, which 

 no human powers could systematise so as to avoid con- 

 fusion. 



Or take it thus : We know that mutilation at an early 

 age produces an effect upon the structure and instincts 



