230 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



pupae of the gray ant (Formica fusca), and rears them up that 

 they may feed its larvae and itself ; for it has itself entirely 

 lost the capability of seeking food. Such degeneration of the 

 instinct in question and of others extends to the workers, that 

 is, to animals which produce no offspring. " The disappearance 

 of such instincts cannot therefore possibly have arisen from the 

 fact that the individual animal became accustomed no longer 

 to seek its food for itself, and that this habit was transmitted 

 in any degree whatever to its offspring." 



The latter argument appears very cogent. It must, how- 

 ever, be pointed out that the fertile ants also are passively 

 fed, and queen-bees too ; and that, therefore, an inheritance 

 of the degeneration of the instinct of food-seeking may very 

 well have occurred. But even if this were not the case, the 

 occurrence of inherited degeneration might, according to my 

 views, very well be explained in another way ; but for this I 

 must refer to the case of the inheritance of the characters of 

 the equally sexless worker-bees, which I shall discuss subse- 

 quently. 



In my opinion, at all events, the absence of natural selec- 

 tion is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the dis- 

 appearance of the food- seeking instinct. Under ordinary 

 circumstances, if an animal takes no nourishment, it starves, 

 and pammixis is at an end. In the cases hitherto mentioned, 

 the seeking of food has been replaced by the passive reception 

 of food. There is nothing to prevent the assumption that the 

 loss of the instinct of seeking food has been acquired by the 

 individual as a result of the passive reception of food from 

 the parents or other individuals, and been transmitted by 

 inheritance. The Axolotls which I have kept in confinement 

 for many years have forgotten how to seek food by their own 

 action, because they are regularly fed with meat from the 

 hand of the attendant. If this condition were to continue 

 through generations, the absence of this spontaneous action 



