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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.)