Page:The Effect of External Influences upon Development.djvu/72

68 not have reproduced, as the workers at the present day cannot mature the scanty egg-cells present in their few egg-tubes. And we must not forget the double, or—in the case of some ants and the termites—three-fold forms of the workers, to which I referred in this connection in my essay! But I may spare myself further reply to the completely untenable contentions of Mr. Spencer, for Mr. Platt Ball has already admirably answered him in a paper on 'Neuter Insects and Lamarckism' (Nat. Science, vol. iv., Febr., 1894). One of the questions put to Spencer by Ball is quite sufficient to show the utter weakness of the position of Lamarckism:—if their characteristics did not arise among the workers themselves, but were transmitted from the pre-social time, how does it happen that the queens and drones of every generation can give anew to the workers the characteristics which they themselves have long ago lost?

That I am not alone in regarding the case of the neuters of ants and termites as affording a proof against the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters is also seen by reference to Prof Lloyd Morgan's book on 'Animal Life and Intelligence' (London, 1890–91). Although this author is still doubtful whether we are right in not acknowledging the Lamarckian principle, he also cites the case of the soldiers of certain ants (Oedocoma cephalotes) possessing enormous heads and mandibles as furnishing an argument against the views of Herbert Spencer. "The possession of these parts so inordinately developed must necessitate many correlated changes. But these cannot be due to inherited use, since such soldiers are sterile’ (loc. cit., p. 213). A good dialectic combatant might certainly maintain in opposition to this argument that this supposed sterility is not proved:—although soldier-ants in all known cases have been found to be sterile, it is known that ordinary workers often lay single eggs; and this may not be an exception,—as is assumed by the opponents of the Lamarckian principle,—but may, in fact, be the rule. Such unfertilized eggs produced by the workers may be destined to give rise to the males of the colony, and thus the changes acquired