130 THE EVOLUTION OF INSTINCT 



social life as among the- workers of the hive bee. If so con- 

 siderable a portion of this remarkable evolution has occurred 

 since the separation of castes excluded the Lamarckian factor 

 from playing any helpful part, we might conclude that the 

 Lamarckian theory is not necessary in order to account for 

 the earlier stages of social progress. 



In the hive bee we not only have the instincts of the more 

 primitive forms carried to a high degree of perfection and 

 specialization, but we have new instincts which must have 

 arisen since the separation of the worker caste, since they 

 have a direct relation to this very separation. Such, for 

 instance, are shown in the remarkable behavior of bees 

 when deprived of their queen. When the queen is removed 

 from the hive and there is no other soon to hatch, the workers 

 destroy a number of old cells and construct a new queen 

 cell, and then proceed to feed the young grub that is en- 

 closed on liberal quantities of royal jelly by means of which 

 it is caused to develop into a new queen. In this case of 

 the instincts which lead the bees to regulate the supply 

 of queens the theory of inherited effects of experience, 

 as Spencer has advocated it, cannot apply. The instinct 

 cannot have antedated the separation of the castes because 

 it is based upon the existence of caste differences. 



Other difficulties are presented by the differentiations 

 within the neuter class among ants and termites where there 

 occur two or more kinds of sterile insects adapted by struc- 

 ture and instinctive endowment for different functions in 

 the community. In many cases the evidence clearly 

 points to the evolution of new adaptive characters in the 

 worker caste, instead of merely the degeneration of the 

 fertile insects. And where this has occurred the Lamarckian 

 theory fails to explain the facts. 



In the chapter on Instinct in the Origin of Species Darwin 



