304 Habit and Instinct. 



instincts developed. If transmissionists contend that 

 these instincts were established as habits in ancestral 

 insects before the present divergence into queens and 

 neuters as established, they must admit that, in this 

 case, their doctrine that disuse influences the germ is 

 inapplicable. For disuse of these special instincts has 

 prevailed in the germ-bearing individuals for we know 

 not how many generations. And if they admit that 

 their doctrine of the effects of disuse is here inapplicable, 

 they so far weaken its claim for consideration in other 

 instances. 



Leaving now the special case of the hymenopterous 

 insects, there is one general argument against the selec- 

 tionist interpretation which is not infrequently urged, 

 but which I do not regard as by any means fatal. 

 It is sometimes said by transmissionists that, if we 

 consider one of the more complex congenital activities, 

 such as the diving of the young moorhen when the puppy 

 frightened him, the accuracy and delicacy of the orderly 

 sequence of activities is such as to be beyond the scope of 

 mere natural selection. It is in the highest degree impro- 

 bable, they say, that natural selection could produce so 

 complex a mode of behaviour. I would meet such an 

 argument by directing attention to the cases of the Yucca 

 moth and the Sitaris given in the first chapter. Here 

 there are extraordinarily complex trains of activities. But 

 they are, and can be, performed only once in a lifetime. 

 And I fail to see how such instincts can possibly be 

 accounted for as the results of transmitted habit indi- 

 vidually acquired. There is no opportunity for that 

 repetition which is essential to acquired skill. We must, 

 presumably, regard every step of the long and complex 

 process as affording the appropriate stimulus for the per- 

 formance of the next succeeding step. At all events, if 



