654 APPENDIX B. 



passive stnictures when the degeneracy is such as aids the pro- 

 sperity of the stirp. 



Making this parenthetical reply to his parenthetical criticism I 

 pass to his discussion of this particular argument which he un- 

 dertakes to dispose of. 



His cheval de bataille is furnished him by the social insects — 

 not a fresh one, however, as might be supposed from the way in 

 which he mounts it. From time to time it has carried other 

 riders, who have couched their lances with fatal effects as they 

 supposed. But I hope to show that no one of them has unhorsed 

 an antagonist, and that Professor Weismann fails to do this just 

 as completely as his predecessors. I am, indeed, not sorry that 

 he has afforded me the opportunity of criticising the general 

 discussion concerning the peculiarities of these interesting crea- 

 tures, which it has often seemed to me sets out with illegitimate 

 assumptions. The supposition always is that the specialities of 

 structures and instincts in the unlike classes of their communities, 

 have arisen during the period in which the communities have 

 existed in something like their present forms. This cannot be. 

 It is doubtless true that association without differentiations of 

 classes may pre-exist for co-operative purposes, as among wolves, 

 and as among various insects which swarm under certain circum- 

 stances. Hence we may suppose that there arise in some cases 

 permanent swarms — that survival of the fittest will establish these 

 constant swarms where they are advantageous. But admitting 

 this, we have also to admit a gradual rise of the associated state 

 out of the solitary state. Wasps and bees present us with grada- 

 tions. If, then, we are to understand how the organized societies 

 have arisen, either out of the solitary state or out of undifferen- 

 tiated swarms, we must assume that the differences of structure 

 and instinct among the members of them arose little by little, as 

 the social organization arose little by little. Fortunately we are 

 able to trace the greater part of the process in the annually- 

 formed communities of the common wasp ; and we shall recognize 

 in it an all-important factor (ignored by Professor Weismann) to 

 which the phenomena, or at any rate the greater part of them, 

 are due. 



But before describing the wasp's annual history, let me set 

 down certain observations made when, as a boy, I was given to 

 angling, and, in July or August, sometimes used for bait " wasp- 

 grubs," as they were called. After having had two or three 

 days the combs or " cakes " of these, full of unfed larvae in all 

 stages of growth, I often saw some of them devouring the edges 

 of their cells to satisfy their appetites ; and saw others, probably 

 the most advanced in growth, which were spinning the little 

 covering caps to their cells, in preparation for assuming the pupa 



