146 Evolution and Adaptation 



very interesting, as it proves that with animals, as with 

 plants, any amount of modification may be effected by the 

 accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous variations, 

 which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit 

 having been brought into play. For peculiar habits confined 

 to the workers or sterile females, however long they might 

 be followed, could not possibly affect the males and fertile 

 females, which alone leave descendants. I am surprised 

 that no one has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case 

 of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited 

 habit, as advanced by Lamarck." 



We may dissent at once from Darwin's statement which, 

 he thinks, " proves that any amount of modification may be 

 affected by the accumulation of numerous slight variations 

 which are in any way profitable without exercise or habit 

 having been brought into play " ; we may dissent if for no 

 other reason than that this begs the whole point at issue, and 

 is not proven. It does not follow because in some colonies 

 all intermediate stages of neuters exist, that in other colo- 

 nies, where no such intermediate stages are present, these 

 have been slowly weeded out by natural selection, causing 

 to disappear all colonies slightly below the mark. It is this 

 that begs the question. Because we can imagine that 

 intermediate stages between the different castes may have 

 been present, it neither follows that such fluctuating varia- 

 tions have been the basis for the evolution of the more 

 sharply defined types, nor that the imagined advantage of 

 such a change would have led through competition to the 

 extermination of the other colonies. However much we 

 may admire the skill with which Darwin tried to meet this 

 difficulty, let us not put down the results to the good of the 

 theory, but rather repeat once more Darwin's own words at 

 the end of this chapter, to the effect that the facts do not 

 strengthen the theory. 



