THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 101 
and worker were only those of degree. If the 
queen were nothing but a large-sized worker-bee, 
in whom certain organs—which were atrophied in 
the worker—had received their full development, 
it would be a fact within comprehension ; but the 
queen differs from the worker not only in size and 
the capability of her organism, but also on several 
important points of structure. And how can mere 
food and air and circumstance produce structural 
change? The worker has many bodily appliances, 
special members ingeniously adapted to her daily 
tasks, of which the queen is wholly destitute; 
while the physical organism of the queen varies 
from that. of the worker in several important 
degrees. 
Some of these must be enumerated. The ab- 
domen of the worker is comparatively short and 
rounded : that of the queen is larger and longer, 
and comes to a fairly sharp point. The jaws of 
the queen are notched on their inner cutting edge: 
the worker’s jaws are smooth like the edge of a 
knife. The tongue of the worker has a spatula 
at its extremity, and is furnished with sensitive 
hairs: the tongue of the queen is shorter, the 
spatula is smaller, while the hairs show greater 
length. The worker-bee has a complicated system 
of wax-secreting discs under the horny plates of 
hér abdomen: in the queen these are absent, nor 
can the most elementary trace of them be dis- 
covered. In their nerve-systems the two show 
