120 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
activities have lately been reviewed by one of the most scholarly entomo- 
logists of the day, Professor Wheeler. In his new book on the subject (12), 
Wheeler mentions, without, however, stressing the significance of the sub- 
ject, that the advance from the solitary condition (that is, a pair of wasps, 
bees, or beetles making separate nests) to the social state is associated with 
two factors. First, the mother does not, as do the solitary forms, die after 
oviposition, but in virtue of special food she is able to survive the birth 
of her offspring ; and secondly, and more significantly, she touches them 
and they touch her in the act of feeding. It is this touch of nature that 
seems to make real kinship between mother and offspring, and that 
provides the starting-point for the development of that highly specialised 
group of societies into which insects alone have the entrée. It would be of 
the greatest interest to make a comparative study of the nervous system 
(particularly of the brain) of those bees, wasps, and beetles that exhibit the 
first touch of social genius. In its more advanced forms, control exercises 
the most diverse influence upon the whole economy of the insect society 
‘ that practises it, one of the most curious being the control of the digestion 
of a specialised article of diet (wood pulp) by the Flagellates that live 
symbiotically in Termites. Termites have apparently discovered and 
exploited the cytolytic ferment that these Flagellates exert, and by a 
process of rectal feeding of their own young they ensure that each larva 
is provided with the necessary digestive ferment. 
The Control of Environment. 
The organism, however, does not exist except as relatedness. We are 
too apt to abstract it as a concept from its inner environment and from 
its setting in the outer environment which are really part of its being. 
The acid test of this proposition is the mature but unfertilised egg. As I 
have pointed out, this microcosm is a system of readiness for complex and 
energetic development, but is without contact with the outer environment. 
It is a closed system. It is physically as well as physiologically alone in the 
world. It hovers between life and death. As a (physiologically) highly 
differentiated system, formed late in physiological history of the individual, 
it is what Child calls a senile cell. Tested by the susceptibility method, by 
respiratory exchange and by heat production, the mature egg of most 
- animals is inactive, and, in contrast to the rate of change it will exhibit if 
fertilised, may be said to be inert. If now this closed static system is put 
in relation to the outer world, the response is immediate. Drastic changes 
convert the static into a highly dynamic system, A dynamic relation 
between the egg and its environment is then a necessary condition for the 
initiation of development, and the ‘ environment’ of later stages is but 
an elaboration of the ‘ relatedness’ opened up by fertilisation. 
The internal or humoral environment, elaborated by the organism 
and controlled by its hormones, forms one of the ‘normals’ of 
the higher animals. This chemical correlation is associated with the 
acquisition of external normals largely but less surely independent of 
changes in the outer world. The place in nature, the environment that 
has become, as it were, part of the organism—constancy of temperature, 
steadiness of balance in the face of altering conditions—is gained pari 
passu with the establishment of normals of internal environment. Regu- 
