58 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



them to the neuters, while on the other hand she 

 has retained her curved unbarbed sting, but strange 

 to say has acquired the power of transmitting an 

 improved and more deadly weapon to the neuters. 

 In the case of the neuters of the hive species it is 

 interesting and not inexplicable that the pecuhari- 

 ties of instinct and structure which are correlated 

 with sterility should be developed in them by the 

 principle of natural selection acting on the community, 

 though transmitted to them by the queen in whom 

 such peculiarities have never been developed. This 

 may be explained ; for as in the course of time 

 modifications of structure and instinct in the neuters 

 were found to be advantageous to the commimity, 

 there was a tendency for the fertile females in the 

 communities in which those modifications were 

 most pronounced to flourish, and so transmit to 

 their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile 

 members with the same peculiarities. Yet the 

 most wonderful feature of the case remains to be 

 mentioned, namely, that in the hive bees those 

 peculiarities which the fertile female or queen 

 transmits to her offspring can be controlled and 

 profoundly modified simply at the wiU of the worker 

 bees by the course of treatment to which the young 

 insect is subjected while in the larva stage, so that 

 from the same egg may be produced either an ordinary 

 neuter — ^with pollen baskets and barbed sting — or 

 a queen without the pollen-collecting appendages, 

 which would be useless, and without the barbed 

 sting, which would be a dangerous if not a fatal 

 equipment. 



That natural selection has been the causa efficiens 

 in bringing about this remarkable combination of 



