INSTINCT 213 



nature than the instincts of bees. What can be more 

 remarkable than that instinct of the workers which 

 causes them to prevent the queen from stinging to 

 death the young queens in their cells? Here we see 

 the instinct of the workers opposing that of the 

 queen, and thus saving the colony and insuring the 

 propagation of the species. And yet at other but 

 proper times the workers permit the old queen to kill 

 the young ones in their cells. How could these in- 

 stincts in the workers, which act in exactly opposite 

 ways at just the right times for the welfare of the 

 community, have ever been evolved? Or how could 

 that instinct have arisen which causes two queens 

 when engaged in combat to refrain from inflicting the 

 mortal sting if they would mutually destroy each 

 other, and thus leave the hive without a queeu? — act- 

 ing as if they knew that the life of one of them was 

 necessary for the welfare of the community. 



Mr. Darwin attempts to account for modifications 

 of structure and instincts by natural selection as fol- 

 lows: "Thus I believe it has been with social in- 

 sects; a slight modification of structure, or of in- 

 stinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain 

 members of the community, has been advantageous 

 to the community; consequently the fertile males and 

 females of the same community flourished, and trans- 

 mitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce 

 sterile members having the same modification. And I 

 believe that this process has been repeated, until that 

 prodigious amount of difference between the fertile 

 and sterile females of the same species has been pro- 

 duced, which we see in so many social insects." * 



The fact that "the fertile males and females" 

 flourished, if it were true, could not induce them to 

 transmit to their offspring a stronger tendency to pro- 



* Origin of Species, p. 228. 



