No. 419.] MACROÉRGATES AMONG ANTS. 885 
excessive care and feeding of certain larvae which had previ- 
ously been permitted to develop as workers beyond the stage 
in which the wing rudiments would make their appearance in 
queen larvae. In other words, the fusca workers attempt to 
change worker larvae of Polyergus into queens but succeed 
only in producing the wingless ergatoids. In explanation of 
such conduct, Wasmann suggests that the F. fusca usually 
have several queens even in very small nests and may perhaps 
retain the instinct, when enslaved by Polyergus, to educate 
numerous female ants. If, after the nuptial flight of the 
Polyergus, they find no fertile queens of their own species in 
the nest they may endeavor to transform the young worker 
larve into queens with the above-mentioned result. Was- 
mann's hypothesis is of interest, as it points to the existence 
of a peculiar instinct in ants which regulates the number and 
character of the personnel in the colony. We know that such 
an instinct is well developed in termites, and it is more than 
probable that it exists also among ants. It offers an interesting 
field for future investigation. 
Both Wasmann's hypothesis to account for the ergatoid 
females of Polyergus by excessive feeding of the worker larve, 
and his interesting “ Lomechusa-Hemmungs-Hypothese," in 
Which he accounts for the pseudogynes of Formica through 
an attempt on the part of the ants to transform queen larvae 
into workers, seem to start from the assumption that the 
larvae are quite passive and that the worker ants feed them 
entirely in obedience to certain instinctive promptings of their 
own. This accords with Emery's view! that the sexual poly- 
morphism of the ant colony is the result of the development of 
an instinct in the workers to feed the larvze in different ways. 
Hence, “the characters in which the worker differs from the 
Corresponding sexual form are not congenital, or blastogenous, 
but acquired, z.e., somatogenous. Nor are these characters 
transmitted by heredity, except as a peculiarity of the germ- 
Plasma to enter on different paths of ontogenetic development 
according to the different circumstances of existence." While 
I5 view is undoubtedly supported by many facts, and while 
1 Loc. cif. 
