EVOLUTION 1087 



evolutionary interest, inasmuch as they form temporary communi- 

 ties. A humble-bees' nest may include 100-500 inmates during the 

 summer — old queen, young queens, workers, and drones; but only 

 the fertilised young queens survive the winter. The worker humble- 

 bees are precisely like the queens, except that they are smaller; 

 the cells are essentially like those of solitary bees; the secretion of 

 wax is rather primitive. In short, the humble- or bumble-bees 

 represent a transition stage between the solitaries and the hive-bees. 

 The interest of this fact is enhanced when we take account of 

 von Jhering's observation that in South America the humble-bee 

 colonies may be perennial. No one supposes that hive-bees were 

 evolved from humble-bees; but that does not lessen the value of 

 the fact that the colonies of humble-bees represent a stage through 

 which the unknown ancestors of the hive-bees must have passed. 



What made the hive possible ? First, there was the establishment 

 of particularly strong social instincts, which were wrought out in 

 a long series of ancestors. Some of these instincts lead to' an almost 

 maniacal self-subordination, witness the brain-fatigue (microscopic- 

 ally demonstrated) and the short life of the summer workers. 

 Second, there was the finer architecture of the honeycomb, for that 

 facihtated storage on a large scale. Thus surviving the winter 

 became the rule. With this, in the third place, there was associated 

 a permanency of home, and in this connection we should take 

 account of a persistently wild species like Apis dorsata, a nomad 

 that builds a temporary comb where honeyed flowers are abundant, 

 and abandons it when supplies are exhausted. Account must also 

 be taken of the habit of swarming, of the puzzling device of rearing 

 new queens when they are needed, and of the sinister massacre of 

 the surviving drones at the end of the season. We are not forgetting 

 that the whole evolution depends on wax, but the power of making 

 this secretion is possessed by all the social bees, including Bombus. 



Thus we pass from primitive solitary wasps to primitive solitary 

 bees, and from solitaries to species that show anticipations of social 

 life. Then, with an admitted hiatus, we begin again with bumble- 

 bees, sometimes actually living without any workers, sometimes 

 maintaining a permanent community, normally exhibiting social 

 life in summer only. Thence, with another hiatus, we reach the 

 species of Apis, which are not all on the level of A. mellifica, 

 with its many virtues and its almost uncanny anticipations of 

 state-socialism. All this is sketchy, but we have indicated the general 

 lines of hive-evolution. 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE SPIDER'S WEB.— No one can help 

 admiring the web of the garden-spider and others like it, best seen at 

 the height of summer, so effective in fly-catching, and so beautiful in 

 structure; and some of those we see in autumn, be-diamonded with 



