NURTURE VERSUS NATURE 



let us not forget that it is only the eggs of the 

 worker that through such treatment can be de- 

 veloped into queens. There are also in the normal 

 hive other eggs, produced parthenogenetically, 

 which will develop into male or drone bees, and 

 which can by no possibilities of altered nutrition 

 be transformed into workers or queens, any more 

 than the worker eggs could be made to develop 

 into drones. 



But this illustration, after all, serves only to 

 give recognition to the fundamental fact that 

 heredity, in the last analysis, puts certain definite 

 limitations on environmental interference. 



No conceivable environing conditions can be 

 expected, in the nature of the case, to bring out 

 potentialities that do not exist. A dwarfed Mon- 

 terey pine may be transformed through altered 

 nurture into a mammoth pine ; a dwarfed rhubarb 

 into a giant rhubarb ; a worker bee into a queen 

 bee. But no conceivable modification of nurture 

 could transform the Monterey pine into a rhubarb 

 of any sort, or the rhubarb into a pine, or either 

 pine or rhubarb into a bee. 



To suggest such transformation would be 

 grotesque. Yet these extreme cases are perhaps 

 worth citing to emphasize the fact that when we 

 speak of the power of nurture over nature as 

 applied to any given individual we refer only to 

 a power of selection between divergent hereditary 

 tendencies. 



The pine has become a pine through endless 

 generations of development; the rhubarb has be- 



[303] 



