270 MENTAL FACULTIES sec. 



supplied, drones are produced. Thus drones, workers, and 

 queens are to some extent to be regarded as organs of an 

 original creature wliicli united the characters of all three. 



4. The effect of conditions of nutrition on the mental 

 characters appears to me above all remarkable, considering 

 the exclusive individuality which those characters present in 

 the different kinds of bees, especially as they can only have 

 been developed as a result of experience. Of course I do not 

 maintain that the separation of the mental characters into 

 three groups, as it exists now in its present perfection and 

 exclusiveness, arose suddenly, any more than that the peculi- 

 arities of bodily structure in the three forms of bees so arose : 

 correlation must have played a part at the very beginning of 

 the differentiation. But these three forms of bees have each 

 gradually advanced towards higher perfection in consequence 

 of the action of external conditions (or of experience) and of 

 selection, and the sudden transformation which now occurs, 

 e.g. of a worker larva into a queen through better nourish- 

 ment, forms an abbreviated repetition of the evolution which 

 formerly proceeded gradually. 



Moreover, I assume that for some time only males and 

 females existed in the bee community, and no workers. 



The conditions existing among the humble-bees enable us 

 to understand the evolution of the forms of bees according to 

 my view. 



" In spring, when the all-vivifying sun has warmed the 

 ground to a certain depth, a female liumble-bee creeps forth 

 from a hole dug by herself in the ground, usually in a position 

 exposed to the sun, or from a rotten tree-trunk, or from a 

 clump of moss, or from some other retreat in which she has 

 passed her winter sleep." Thus Professor Eduard Hoffer com- 

 mences his description of the liumble-bees of Styria,^ and he 



^ E. Hoffer, Die Iluvimeln Steiennark's, Lehensgeschichte und Beschreibung 

 derselben. Graz, 1882. 



