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cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers,—ants making slaves,—the larvæ of ichneumonidæ feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars,—not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die. [page] 245 CHAP. VIII. HYBRIDISM
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At the same time I laid on the same place a small parcel of the pupæ of another species, F. flava, with a few of these little yellow ants still clinging to the fragments of the nest. This species is sometimes, though rarely, made into slaves, as has been described by Mr. Smith. Although so small a species, it is very courageous, and I have seen it ferociously attack other ants. In one instance I found to my surprise an independent community of F. flava under a stone beneath a nest of the slave
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of the Conditions of Existence embraced by the theory of Natural Selection. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Page 171-206 CHAPTER VII. INSTINCT. Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin — Instincts graduated — Aphides and ants — Instincts variable — Domestic instincts, their origin — Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees — Slave-making ants — Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct — Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts — Neuter or sterile
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. ——, blind, in caves, 137. ——, extinct, of Australia, 339. Anomma, 240. Antarctic islands, ancient flora of, 399. Antirrhinum, 161. Ants attending aphides, 211. ——, slave-making instinct, 219. BEES. Ants, neuter, structure of, 236. Aphides attended by ants, 211. Aphis, development of, 442. Apteryx, 182. Arab horses, 35. Aralo-Caspian Sea, 339. Archiac, M. de, on the succession of species, 325. Artichoke, Jerusalem, 142. Ascension, plants of, 389. Asclepias, pollen of, 193. Asparagus, 359
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CHAPTER VII. INSTINCT. Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin — Instincts graduated — Aphides and ants — Instincts variable — Domestic instincts, their origin — Natural instincts of the cuckoo, ostrich, and parasitic bees — Slave-making ants — Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct — Difficulties on the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts — Neuter or sterile insects — Summary. THE subject of instinct might have been worked into the previous chapters; but I have
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judge, been produced for the exclusive good of others. One of the strongest instances of an animal apparently performing an action for the sole good of another, with which I am acquainted, is that of aphides voluntarily yielding their sweet excretion to ants: that they do so voluntarily, the following facts show. I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphides on a dock- [page] 211 CHAP. VII. INSTINCT
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fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind. The subject well deserves to be discussed at great length, but I will here take only a single case, that of working or sterile ants. How the workers have been rendered sterile is a difficulty; but not much greater than that of any other striking modification of structure; for it can be shown that some insects and other articulate animals in a state of nature occasionally become sterile; and if such insects had been social
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cocystus, the workers of one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the workers of another caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen which secretes a sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted by the aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our European ants guard or imprison. It will indeed be thought that I have an overweening confidence in the principle of natural selection, when I do not admit that such wonderful and well-established facts at
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labour is useful to civilised man. As ants work by inherited instincts and by inherited tools or weapons, and not by acquired knowledge and manufactured instruments, a perfect division of labour could be effected with them only by the workers being sterile; for had they been fertile, they would have intercrossed, and their instincts and structure would have become blended. And nature has, as I believe, effected this admirable division of labour in the communities of ants, by the means of
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plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours. After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to excrete. I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one excreted; I then tickled and stroked them with a hair in the same manner, as well as I could, as the ants do with their antennæ; but not one excreted. Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit them, and it immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to be well aware what a rich flock it had discovered
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materials for the nest: both, but chiefly the slaves, tend, and milk as it may be called, their aphides; and thus both collect food for the community. In England the masters alone usually leave the nest to collect building materials and food for themselves, their slaves and larvæ. So that the masters in this country receive much less service from their slaves than they do in Switzerland. By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend to conjecture. But as ants, which are
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selection, 31. ——, two sub-breeds unintentionally produced, 36. ——, mountain, varieties of, 76. Shells, colours of, 132. ——, littoral, seldom embedded, 288. ——, fresh-water, dispersal of, 385. —— of Madeira, 391. ——, land, distribution of, 397. STRIPES. Silene, fertility of crosses, 257. Silliman, Prof., on blind rat, 137. Skulls of young mammals, 197, 437. Slave-making instinct, 219. Smith, Col. Hamilton, on striped horses, 164. ——, Mr. Fred., on slave-making ants, 219. ——, on neuter ants, 239
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number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been thus acquired. It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as corporeal structure for the welfare of each species, under its present conditions of life. Under changed conditions of life, it
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instinct of certain ants; and the comb-making power of the hive-bee: these two latter instincts have generally, and most justly, been ranked by naturalists as the most wonderful of all known instincts. It is now commonly admitted that the more immediate and final cause of the cuckoo's instinct is, that [page] 217 CHAP. VII. OF THE CUCKOO
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jaws. Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried their dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they were prevented from
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of difference between the fertile and sterile females of the same species has been produced, which we see in many social insects. But we have not as yet touched on the climax of the difficulty; namely, the fact that the neuters of several ants differ, not only from the fertile females and males, but from each other, sometimes to an almost incredible degree, and are thus divided into two or even three castes. The castes, moreover, do not generally graduate into each other, but are perfectly well
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the smaller workers, until all the workers had come to be in this condition; we should then have had a species of ant with neuters very nearly in the same condition with those of Myrmica. For the workers of Myrmica have not even rudiments of ocelli, though the male and female ants of this genus have well-developed ocelli. I may give one other case: so confidently did I expect to find gradations in important points of structure between the different castes of neuters in the same species, that I
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a house of whom many were five feet four inches high, and many sixteen feet high; but we must suppose that the larger workmen had heads four instead of three times as big as those of the smaller men, and jaws nearly five times as big. The jaws, moreover, of the working ants of the several sizes differed wonderfully in shape, and in the form and number of the teeth. But the important fact for us is, that though the workers can be grouped into castes of different sizes, yet they graduate
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special difficulty on the theory of natural selection; and one of the most curious of these is the existence of two or three defined castes of workers or sterile females in the same community of ants; but I have attempted to show how this difficulty can be mastered. With respect to the almost universal sterility of species when first crossed, which forms so remarkable a contrast with the almost universal fertility of varieties when crossed, I must refer the reader to the recapitulation of the facts
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. Horner, Mr., on the antiquity of Egyptians, 18. Horns, rudimentary, 454. Horse, fossil, in La Plata, 318. Horses destroyed by flies in La Plata, 72. ——, striped, 163. ——, proportions of, when young, 445. Horticulturists, selection applied by, 32. Huber on cells of bees, 230. ——, P., on reason blended with instinct, 208. ——, on habitual nature of instincts, 208. ——, on slave making ants, 219. ——, on Melipona domestica, 225. Humble-bees, cells of, 225. Hunter, J., on secondary sexual characters, 150
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