25 APRIL 1874, Page 12

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.")

SIR,—As a bee-keeper I have read with much interest your arti- cles and your correspondents' letters on the " Busy Bee." I do not know whether you will think the following observations to the point, but they relate to a fact in bee life of some importance which bas not been referred to in the discussion. It is well known that if a larva is removed from a worker cell to a queen cell, it is developed into a queen. Now, on the supposition that instinct is hereditary, this fact would seem to prove that both the accumulative and constructive instincts of the worker and the materaal instincts of the queen are potentially transmitted to all the species, while the treatment which the larva receives in infancy determines which of the two instincts becomes actually