268 
In attempting to solve the problem thus presented, 
Mr. Darwin makes three assumptions as to the present 
condition of these neuter insects ; he indicates the only 
way in which he thinks it possible that Natural Selection 
could act in such a case. And he adduces arguments in 
support of his hypothesis. 
He asserts that the neuter insect is “ annually born, 
capable of work, but incapable of reproduction.” His 
assertion contains two assumptions. It implies—(ist) 
That the neuter insect is born a neuter, or, in other 
words, that the egg once laid must develop into a 
neuter insect. (2nd) That the neuter insect can never 
become fertile. 
Now, as to the first of these propositions, the facts are 
these. If the queen bee lays an unfertilised egg, it hatches 
into a male; if it lays a fertilised egg, it contains a potential 
female, which may become a fertile female or a neuter 
according to the food on which it is fed and the conditions 
in which it is placed, and especially upon the size of the 
cell in which it is deposited. 
This well-ascertained fact suggests the a priori prob 
ability that what occurs in connection with bees will also 
occur in connection with ants. Arguing against the 
opinion of Mr. Dewitz, that the queens and workers of 
ants are produced from different kinds of eggs, Sir John 
Lubbock says :— 
“ However great the difficulty may be to understand how the ants 
can have learnt to produce queens and workers from one kind of egg, 
the same difficulty exists almost to the same extent in bees, which, as 
Mr. Dewitz admits, do possess the power. Moreover it seems to me 
very unlikely that the result is produced in one way in the case of 
bees and another in that of ants. ... On the whole, then, I 
cannot but think that ants, like bees, possess the power of develop 
ing a given egg into either a queen or a worker.”—(.Ants, Bees and 
Wasps, pp. 40-1.)