128 
E. M. CAMPBELL-ON INSTINCT. 
inferior workers. Neuter-bees are great robbers; the weaker 
hives are pillaged, the breeding in them is checked, and in the end 
they are eliminated. The most daring marauders in such ex¬ 
peditions may be killed, but their death affects the development of 
the species to a very much less extent than in the case of animals 
which might be expected to leave offspring. So long as a hive is 
strong, the queen-bee can propagate her race in security. The loss 
to the species by the death of a neuter-bee is but that of an 
individual in a working community, but the loss to the species 
by the death of a breeding-animal which excels in a particular 
characteristic, is the reduction of the number of the fittest in¬ 
dividuals upon whom the further development of the species is 
dependent. Any little advance in the habits of a hive has a greater 
effect than is usual with an ordinary animal, which does not live in 
a community, and does not rob other communities of its species of 
stores necessary to their existence. A weak individual may escape 
attack by concealment, but a hive is an open treasure, and, if weak, 
is certain to be robbed and die out, where there is no bee-master. 
Thus we see that the “ survival of the fittest ” is very quickly realised 
amongst communities which rob one another, and this is doubtless 
the main cause of the development of special aptitudes amongst 
ants as well as bees. In other words, there is no reason why 
natural selection should not act upon a community as it acts upon 
an individual. The community becomes, as it were, individualised. 
There is but little to be suggested in connection with the 
development of the cell-making instinct of the hive-bee, more than 
is contained on that subject in the eighth chapter of the ‘ Origin of 
Species.’ Darwin there remarks that “ in the series between the 
extreme perfection of the cells of the hive-bee and the simplicity of 
those of the humble-bee we have the cells of the Mexican Melipona,” 
so that if we believe that bees had a common progenitor, we can 
understand how “ the most wonderful of all known instincts can 
be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of 
numerous successive slight modifications of simpler instincts.” 
Deigning Death and Injury. 
I have already touched on the relation existing between physio¬ 
logical conditions and “ Instinct.” These conditions are sometimes 
well adapted to a special set of circumstances. Dor instance, the 
effect of fear acting on the nervous system is partial or entire 
paralysis, and the still position which it entails is frequently of 
great advantage in the presence of an enemy. I referre d to this 
subject in my paper “ Observations on Spiders,” * but I did not 
then enter upon the development which might arise from this 
physiological condition. It is possible that this fright-paralysis, 
called by Preyer “ Kataplexy,” f is the origin of the habit usually 
called “ shamming death,” and so frequently seen in animals. 
Let us suppose an insect to have been at times thus only partially 
* ‘Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc.,’ 1879-81, Yol. I, p. 46. 
f See ‘ Sammlung Physiologischer Abhandlungen,’ 2nd ser. 1st part, 1878. 
