1 82 Scientific Sophisms. 



scale, must have started, on Mr. Darwin's view, 

 as ordinary male and female, with a common 

 share of individual labour ; on a par, in this 

 respect, with a flock of geese, or a herd of cattle, 

 or a community of mankind. Now let any 

 breeder of cattle consider through what agencies 

 a variety could be attained of which only one 

 birth in five should be a bull or a cow, the other 

 four being natural neuters, devoted subjects of 

 their perfect sister, but sworn foes of her spouse. 

 It is an aptitude precisely analogous to this 

 that has produced, we are asked to believe, the 

 economy of the bee-hive. Or let any trans- 

 atlantic admirer of the 'domestic institution* 

 of Formica rufescens, turn over in his mind the 

 means by which every third man-child born on 

 his estate should be ten times the size of the 

 rest of 'the family; 1 or each alternate female 

 be fitted for a nurse while forbidden to be a 



1 Mr. Darwin, in noting the fact that " the neuters of 

 several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and 

 males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost in- 

 credible degree," says, " The difference between them is 

 the same as if we were to see a set of workmen building 

 a house, of whom many were five feet high, and many 

 sixteen feet high but we must further suppose that the 

 larger workmen had heads four times as big as those of 

 the smaller men, and jaws nearly five times as big." 

 " Origin of Species," pp. 260, 261 



