110 THE ALTERNATING GENERATIONS 



tioii, in which it builds cells and deposits its eggs ; from 

 the eggs proceed larva, but the insects into which these 

 larvm are metamorphosed are not fertile; they are barren, 

 and all their faculties are directed to the assisting of the 

 parent animal in the better nourishing of the future 

 brood, to which end, some of their external organs are 

 transformed, and to the erection of a better habitation and 

 cells into which they convey the eggs of the female, and 

 the food of the lafva to be developed from them. Other 

 cells, which contain a better sort of food, are erected for 

 a later and less numerous progeny of eggs ; and again in 

 otliers, which are more roomy and provided with the best 

 kind of food, but of which there are only a few, is the 

 last brood of the female deposited. From the first kind 

 of cells, proceed the barren individuals, from the second 

 the males, and from the third the females ; after under- 

 going a metamorphosis, the males and females fly away, 

 impregnation takes place and the males die ; the females, 

 however, return, and the whole multitude of barren indi- 

 viduals, which at the same time perform the duty of 

 feeding the young, build cells for their various progeny of 

 eggs, and nourish the three forms of larvae which proceed 

 from them. In this way the inhabitants of the colony 

 become very numerous ; nevertheless they all die off in 

 the winter ; the fertile females alone remain alive, and 

 propagate the species the year following, under the same 

 development of alternating broods, the earlier of which is 

 always by far the most numerous, and assists in the 

 development of the later. In the colonies of Bees, Ants, 

 and Termites, the same thing occurs ; the many thousand 

 individuals which constitute one of these colonies, are 

 principally " feeders," or individuals which have origin- 

 ated in ihe precedent divisions of the eggs of the females, 

 and in these is exhibited, even with greater precision, a 

 more marked division of labom' in the feeding of the 

 progeny. So that, out of the various precedent divisions, 

 individuals apparently arise which assist in the develop- 

 ment of the more perfect progeny in various ways. Thus 



