242 LIFE AND HABIT. 



since so thoroughly exploded, that it is not worth while 

 to go into an explanation of what it was, or to refute it in 

 detail. Here, however, is an argument against it, which 

 is so much better than anything advanced yet, that one 

 is surprised it has never been made use of; so we will 

 just advance it, as it were, to slay the slain, and pass on. 

 Such, at least, is the effect which the paragraph above 

 quoted produced upon myself, and would, I think, pro- 

 duce on the great majority of readers. When driven 

 by the exigencies of my own position to examine the 

 value of the demonstration more closely, I conclude, 

 either that I have utterly failed to grasp Mr. Darwin's 

 meaning, or that I have no less completely mistaken 

 the value and bearing of the facts I have myself 

 advanced in these few last pages. Failing this, my 

 surprise is, not that "no one has hitherto advanced" 

 the instincts of neuter insects as a demonstrative case 

 against the doctrine of inherited habit, but rather that 

 Mr. Darwin should have thought the case demonstra- 

 tive ; or again, when I remember that the neuter work- 

 ing bee is only an aborted queen, and may be turned 

 back again into a queen, by giving it such treatment 

 as it can alone be expected to remember — then I am 

 surprised that the structure and instincts of neuter 

 bees has never (if never) been brought forward in sup- 

 port of the doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by 

 Lamarck, and against any theory which would rob such 

 instincts of their foundation in intelligence, and of their 

 connection with experience and memory. 



As for the instinct to mutilate, that is as easily ac- 

 counted for as any other inherited habit, whether of 



