But I must pass over this preliminary
difficulty. The great difficulty lies in the working ants differing
widely from both the males and the fertile females in structure, as in
the shape of the thorax and in being destitute of wings and sometimes
of eyes, and in instinct. As far as instinct alone is concerned, the
prodigious difference in this respect between the workers and the
perfect females, would have been far better exemplified by the
hive-bee. If a working ant or other neuter insect had been an animal
in the ordinary state, I should have unhesitatingly assumed that all
its characters had been slowly acquired through natural selection;
namely, by an individual having been born with some slight profitable
modification of structure, this being inherited by its offspring,
which again varied and were again selected, and so onwards. But with
the working ant we have an insect differing greatly from its parents,
yet absolutely sterile; so that it could never have transmitted
successively acquired modifications of structure or instinct to its
progeny. It may well be asked how is it possible to reconcile this
case with the theory of natural selection?
First, let it be remembered that we have innumerable instances, both
in our domestic productions and in those in a state of nature, of all
sorts of differences of structure which have become correlated to
certain ages, and to either sex. We have differences correlated not
only to one sex, but to that short period alone when the reproductive
system is active, as in the nuptial plumage of many birds, and in the
hooked jaws of the male salmon.
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