Are Acqitired Habits inherited? 303 



if natural selection be excluded, instinctive defmiteness of 

 response has not been developed. Are there any cases of 

 the converse kind, where that kind of influence on which 

 transmissionists rely is necessarily excluded? Among 

 birds to which our attention has been chiefly confined 

 I know of no such cases. But there is the oft-quoted 

 instance of the instincts of neuter hymenoptera. The 

 matter has been so fully discussed that only a few words 

 on the subject are here needful. 



In the case of the hive-bee, of the eggs laid by the 

 queen-mother those which she does not fertilize from 

 the store of spermatozoa received from the male during 

 the nuptial flight, develop into drones. The others, 

 which she does so fertilize, are developed either into 

 fertile queen-mothers, or into the sexually imperfect 

 females known as neuters ; and which they develop into 

 is entirely dependent on the food they are supplied with 

 in the larval condition. Fed on a specially rich nutritious 

 pap they become fertile queens : otherwise, under ordinary 

 conditions of nutrition, they become infertile neuters. 

 This is one of those many cases, where the conditions of 

 early life determine which of two or more definite forms 

 an organism shall assume. And, in the bee, different 

 instincts and innate powers are correlated with the queen 

 and neuter types respectively. 



Notwithstanding all the admirable work of many 

 careful observers, we are scarcely in a position to say 

 how much of the behaviour of the nurse or worker bee 

 is due to a congenital instinctive tendency, and how 

 much to the influence of tradition through imitation. 

 We may, however, accept provisionally the generally 

 received opinion that there are special instinctive endow- 

 ments in these infertile workers. But they are inherited 

 through parents, in neither of which are these special 



