(TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."
SIR,-If the writers of the two letters in your last number care to read what I have said about the obvious difficulty of worker-bees and ants being sterile, and therefore leaving no descendants to profit from the inherited effects of habit, they will find the subject discussed and, I think, explained, in the latter part of the chapter -on "Instinct "in my "Origin of Species." Independently of the -case of neuter insects, it seems to me a great error to assume that 411 instincts must have arisen from intelligent actions which have left an inherited impression on the brain, from having been often performed. What reason can be assigned against the converse -case of slight changes or variations in the brain leading to modified actions ?—and these, if inherited, would be called instinctive.— am, Sir, &c., CHARLES DARWEI. Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 12.
Previous page
