98 THE EVOLUTION THEORY 



workers, but the whole colony, that is, the whole progeny of the 

 queen, which is selected, according to the greater or less degree of 

 effectiveness displayed by the workers. Strictly speaking, it 'is the 

 single queen that is selected in relation to her power of producing 

 superior or inferior workers. A colony whose queen was unsatisfactory 

 in this respect could not hold its own in the struggle for existence, 

 and only the best colonies and the best hives would survive, that is, 

 through their descendants. If the hive contained a hundred queens 

 instead of a single queen the process of selection would be much 

 more complex and less clear, and it is even quite conceivable that the 

 production of specially modified workers, adapted to their functions, 

 or of two or three different kinds of workers, would not have been 

 possible at all. For it would not have helped much if one out of 

 a hundred females had produced workers of better structure ; only 

 a majority of such females could give the colony any advantage as 

 compared with other colonies. 



It has not been definitely established whether, among ants, a 

 single female is in all cases the founder of the whole colony, but it is 

 certain that there are only a few females. In the tropical Termites 

 we know that the ovaries of the female attain to such a colossal size 

 that one female must certainly suffice for the necessities of the largest 

 colonies. Grassi has shown, indeed, that, as far as the South European 

 Termites are concerned, not only are there several females present, but 

 that even the workers frequently reproduce ; but the Termites in general 

 are inhabitants of warm countries, and the few European species 

 probably hardly represent the original composition of these animal 

 colonies. But of the tropical species, which have as yet not been 

 sufficiently studied, we know at least the extraordinary dimensions 

 of the body, and the corresponding fertility of the queens, and 

 we conclude from this that only a few can be present in each 

 termitary'. 



Now that we have discussed all these facts it will not be out of 

 place to summarize the results, in as far as they have any relation to 

 the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the inheritance of acquired 

 characters. 



No direct proof of such transmission could be found ; on the 

 contrary, it has been shown that all that has hitherto been advanced 

 as such will not stand the test of close examination ; an inheritance 

 of wounds and mutilations does not exist, the transmission of trauma- 

 tically induced epilepsy is not only doubtful as regards its causes, but 



^ Ingwe Sjostedt has recently established in Africa that it is usually a single queen 

 and a single king that found a termitary (Schivecl. Akacl. Abh. Bd. 34, 1902). 



