Note 11 — SPENCER'S EXAMPLES AND ARGUMENTS.

Origin of Species, pp. 230-232; Bates's Naturalist on the Amazons. Darwin is "surprised that no one has hitherto advanced the demonstrative case of neuter insects, against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck." As he justly observes, "it proves that with animals, as with plants, any amount of modification may be effected by the accumulation of numerous, slight, spontaneous variations, which are in any way profitable, without exercise or habit having been brought into play. For peculiar habits confined to the workers or sterile females, however long they might be followed, could not possibly affect the males and fertile females, which alone leave any descendants." Some slight modification of these remarks, however, may possibly be needed to meet the case of "factitious queens," who (probably through eating particles of the royal food) become capable of producing a few male eggs.