60 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



hive drone, reduced to that most dismal of all neces- 

 sities sponging on unwilling relations. He enjoys 

 himself in an independent way while he can, and 

 he is not likely to remain long unmated. The poor 

 degraded hive drone suffers much in comparison ; 

 he has fared badly while the great principles of free 

 competition and laissez-faire were winning for his 

 species a worthy place beside the ants. The hive 

 drone is produced and maintained by the colony 

 for one purpose, and all his instincts which do not 

 tend directly or indirectly to further that single 

 purpose have been retrograding. He has lost most 

 of what intelligence his kind ever possessed ; he 

 has lost the power of seeking his own food, being 

 helplessly dependent on the earnings of the colony. 

 Of his miserable life the bees are so contemptuously 

 generous that for one queen which requires to be 

 mated they generally produce at least one hundred 

 drones, ninety-nine of which, excluding accidents, 

 live to be ruthlessly slaughtered by the bees at the 

 end of the season. The favoured one which meets 

 the queen on her marriage flight pays the penalty 

 of being chosen to such a lofty destiny. The queen 

 returns to the hive alone, and during her life remains 

 true to her first love, but her elect returns no more ; 

 he has been the hero of a love tragedy, and even in 

 articulo mortis has become the father of a mighty 

 host. This peculiar fate, which happily is rare in 

 the animal kingdom, is, however, said to be shared 

 by the male of the humble bee, but here I cannot 

 speak from personal observation. 



Has the present condition of the humble bees 

 and their evolution to a higher social development 

 any bearing on other questions ? The family or 



