492 LAWS OF MULTIPLICATION. 



which greater growth resulted. All which the argument 

 requires is that when such reversion to agamogenesis does 

 take place, it shall be where the food is unusually abundant 

 and the expenditure unusually small; and this the cases 

 instanced go to show. 



360. The physiological lesson taught us by Bees and 

 Ants, not quite harmonizing with the moral lesson they are 

 supposed to teach, is that highly-fed idleness is favourable to 

 fertility, and that excessive industry has barrenness for its 

 concomitant. 



The egg of a Bee develops into a small barren female or 

 into a large fertile female, according to the supply of food 

 given to the larva hatched from it. We here see that the 

 germ-producing action is an overflow of the surplus remain- 

 ing after completion of the individual; and that the lower 

 feeding which the larva of a working Bee has, results in a 

 dwarfing of the adult and an arrested development of the 

 generative organs. Further, we have the fact that the con- 

 dition under which the perfect female, or mother-Bee, goes 

 on, unlike insects in general, laying eggs continuously, is 

 that she has plenty of food brought to her, is kept warm, and 

 goes through no considerable exertion. While, contrariwise, 

 it is to be noted that the infertility of the workers is asso- 

 ciated with the ceaseless labour of bringing materials for the 

 combs and building them, as well as the labour of feeding 

 the queen, the larvae, and themselves. 



Ants also show us these relations, and they are shown in a 

 greatly exaggerated form by what are called white ants 

 insects belonging to a quite different order. The contrast 

 in bulk between the fecund and infecund females is here 

 immensely greater. The mother- Ant has the reproductive 

 system so enormously developed, that the remainder of her 

 body is relatively insignificant. Entirely incapable of loco- 

 motion, she is unable to deposit her eggs in the places where 

 they are to be hatched ; so that they have to be carried away 



