Origin of Species Variorum

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 insensibly into each other, as does the widely-different structure of their jaws. I speak confidently on this latter point, as Sir J. Lubbock made drawings for me, with the camera lucida, of the jaws which I .. dissected from the workers of the several sizes. Mr. Bates, in his most interesting 'Naturalist on the Amazons,' has described .. analogous cases.

With these facts before me, I believe that natural selection, by acting on the fertile ants or parents, could form a species which should regularly produce neuters, either all of large size with one form of jaw, or all of small size with jaws having a widely different structure; or lastly, and this is the climax of difficulty, one set of workers of one size and structure, and at the same time another set of workers of a different size and structure;— a graduated series having first been formed, as in the case of the driver ant, and then the extreme forms ... having been produced in greater and greater numbers, through the survival of the parents which generated them, until none with an intermediate structure were produced.

An analogous explanation has been given by Mr. Wallace, of the equally complex case, of certain Malayan Butterflies regularly appearing ... under two or even three distinct female forms; and by Fritz Müller, of certain Brazilian crustaceans likewise appearing under two widely distinct male forms. But this subject need not here be discussed.

I have now explained how, as I believe, the wonderful fact of two distinctly defined castes of sterile workers existing in the same nest, both widely different from each other and from