gin of Species' is
taken up with supporting the theory of descent with modification (which
frequently in the recapitulation chapter of the 'Origin of Species' he
seems to treat as synonymous with natural selection), has fallen into
the common error of thinking that Lamarck can be ignored or passed over
in a couple of sentences. I only find Lamarck's name twice in the 1859
edition of the 'Origin,' once on p. 242, where Mr. Darwin writes: "I am
surprised that no one has advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
insects, against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck;" and again, p. 427,
where Lamarck is stated to have been the first to call attention to the
"very important distinction between real affinities and analogical or
adaptive resemblances." How far from demonstrative is the particular
case which in 1859 Mr. Darwin considered so fatal to "the well-known
doctrine of Lamarck"--which should surely, one would have thought,
include the doctrine of descent with modification, which Mr. Darwin is
himself supporting--I have attempted to show in 'Life and Habit,' but
had perhaps better recapitulate briefly here.

Mr. Darwin writes: "In the simpler case of neuter insects all of one
caste, _which, as I believe, have been rendered different from the
fertile males and females through natural selection_...."[196] He thus
attributes the sterility and peculiar characteristics, we will say, of
the common hive working bees--"neuter insects all of one caste"--to
natural selection. Now, nothing is more certain than that these
characteristics--sterility, a cavity in the thigh for collecting wax, a
proboscis for gathering honey, &c.--are due to the treatment which the
eggs laid by the queen bee receive after they have left her body. Take
an egg and treat it in a certain way, and it becomes a working bee;
treat the same egg in a certain other way, and it becomes a queen. If
the bees are in danger of becoming queenless they take eggs which were
in the way of being developed into working bees, and change their food
and cells, whereon they develop into queens instead. How Mr. Darwin
could attribute the neutralization of the working bees--an act which is
obviously one of abortion committed by the body politic of the hive on a
balance of considerations--to the action of what he calls "natural
selection," and how, again, he could suppose that what he was advancing
had any but a confirmatory bearing upon Lamarck's position, is
incomprehensible, un