SPECIALITIES OF THESE RELATIONS. 493 



by the workers as fast as they are extruded. Her life is thus 

 reduced substantially to that of a parasite — an absorption of 

 abundant food supplied gratis, a total absence of expendi- 

 ture, and a consequent excessive rate of genesis. " The 

 queen-ant of the African Termites lays 80,000 eggs in twenty- 

 four hours." 



§ 361. It may be needful to say that these exceptional 

 relations cannot be ascribed to the assigned causes acting 

 alone. The extreme fertility which, among parasites and 

 social insects, accompanies extremely high feeding and an 

 expenditure reduced nearly to zero, presupposes typical struc- 

 tures and tendencies of suitable kinds; and these are not 

 directly accounted for. On creatures otherwise organized, 

 unlimited supplies of food and total inactivity are not fol- 

 lowed by such results. There of course requires a consti- 

 tution fitted to the special conditions, and the evolution of 

 this cannot be due simply to plethora joined with rest. These 

 cases are given as illustrating the conditions under which 

 extreme exaltations of fertility become possible. Their mean- 

 ings, thus limited, are clear, and completely to the point. We 

 see in them that the devotion of nutriment to race-preserva- 

 tion, is carried furthest where the cost of self-preservation 

 is reduced to a minimum; and, conversely, that nothing is 

 devoted directly to race-preservation by individuals on which 

 falls an excessive expenditure for self-preservation and pre- 

 servation of other's offspring. 



[Note. — Among specialities of these relations may be fitly 

 added here a very strange one, for a description of which I 

 am indebted to M. Charles Julin, Professor of Comparative 

 Anatomy in the University of Liege. In the Revue Generate 

 des Sciences for 30th August, 1894, in an account of certain 

 investigations of M. Giard, he describes what he calls "la 

 castration parasitaire" — a castration not of a literal kind 



