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endeavour to sleep away the winter in a drowsy condition. At the 
first breath of spring they emerge—‘ but not the six hundred.’ Frost 
and hunger have killed most of them off; only one or two queens 
out of all the pioneers which went forth from the old nest have lived 
through the hard times to become the foundresses of new colonies 
and future dynasties.”—(Grant Allen. Longman's Magazine, vol. xxiii., 
P- ¿22.) 
Here we are told that the survival of one queen 
rather than another “is decided in nature’s rough-and- 
ready fashion by the chances of survival.” That is the 
way in which this well-informed and charming writer 
describes a struggle which we should have expected to 
have resulted in the strictest survival of the fittest. 
The case of the termites is no more favourable to 
any process of selection such as the theory requires. 
“ In the evening, soon after the first tornado, which proclaims the 
approach of the ensuing rains, the males and females emerge from 
their clay-built citadels by myriads and myriads to seek their fortune. 
Borne on ample wings and carried by the wind, they fill the air. The 
next morning they are discovered covering the surface of the earth 
and waters, deprived of the wings which before enabled them to 
avoid their numerous enemies, and looking like large maggots. They 
are the prey of innumerable enemies, to the smallest of which they 
make not the least resistance. Insects, especially ants, which are always 
on the hunt for them, leaving no place unexplored ; birds, reptiles, 
beasts, and even man himself, look upon this event as their harvest 
and make them their food ; so that scarcely a single pair in many 
millions get into a place of safety and lay the foundation of a new 
community.”—(Kirby and Spence. Ento?nology. p. 308.) 
The only arguments adduced by Mr. Darwin in favour 
of his hypothesis—the existence of gradations of structure 
—are (1st) the fact of correlation, and (2nd) the fact of 
gradations in the forms of neuter insects. But neither 
of these facts can be accepted as a proof of the action 
of Natural Selection. They are indicative, it may be, of 
the way in which the transmutation of certain specific 
forms has been brought about, but they do not in 
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