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Mr. Cunningham had formed a similar conjecture, and he 
claims that this conjecture has now been confirmed by 
actual investigation. 
“At last I find that, according to Emery, Grassi, an Italian 
biologist, has satisfied himself and published direct evidence that the 
termites have the power of regulating the number of workers and 
soldiers by rearing them at will by appropriate feeding and treatment. 
. . . Emery concludes that the workers of all social insects are 
reared in a similar way from germs which are capable of producing 
normal sexual individuals.”—{Natural Science, vol. iv., ft. 287.) 
If this evidence be accepted—and I am not aware that 
it has been called in question—it follows that the first 
assumption of the theory that the neuter is born a neuter, 
or, in other words, that the queen lays different kinds of 
eggs which are necessarily developed into males, females 
or neuters, can no longer be accepted as true. 
Again, it is assumed that the neuter insect is incapable 
of sexual reproduction. Once a neuter, always a neuter; 
“ capable of work, but incapable of procreation.” But the 
experiments of Sir John Lubbock go to show that in nests 
which have no queens all the eggs were laid by neuters 
and all of them hatched out into males ; and he thinks 
that in most nests there are a few fertile workers.* The 
third assumption is as follows :— 
“ Ants work by inherited instincts and by inherited organs or 
tools, whilst man works by acquired knowledge and manufactured 
instruments.”—(Origin of Species, ft. 233.) 
One does not exactly understand in what sense Mr. Darwin 
asserts that “ ants work by inherited instincts ” ; for he 
asserts that the acquired faculties of the worker cannot 
be inherited. It is to be supposed that he means to say 
that these instincts arise through those variations which 
Ants, Bees anil Wasps. ftp. 36-7.