unity. How
could they have been produced by evolution? The workers are sterile and
leave no offspring, consequently their instincts cannot be inherited
from bees of their own class. Each generation of workers is isolated
from all succeeding generations. A colony of bees is not like a
community of civilized human beings in whom many of the wants are
artificial, and which may remain unsupplied, with simply a certain
amount of discomfort, but the wants which the instincts of bees supply
are imperative, and, therefore, the instincts themselves, as a whole,
are necessary to the existence of the bees. Their instincts are all
linked together as a necessary chain, so that if one should fail the
community would perish. Each kind of work is perfectly done, and yet the
workers are totally unconscious as to what will be the result of their
labors. For the most part they work for future generations of their
colony, and not for themselves, and yet they are as careful and diligent
as if they were guided by the highest intelligence and the most selfish
motives [tr. note: sic no punctuation]. Fairhurst, whom we are quoting,
adds: "There is nothing more wonderful and mysterious in nature than the
instincts of bees. What can be more remarkable than that instinct of the
workers which causes them to prevent the queen from stinging to death
the young queens in their cells? Here we see the instinct of the workers
opposing that of the queen, and thus saving the colony and insuring the
propagation of the species. And yet at other but proper times the
workers permit the old queen to kill the young ones in their cells. How
could these instincts in the workers, which act in exactly opposite ways
by just the right times for the welfare of the community, have ever been
evolved? Or how could that instinct have arisen which causes two queens
when engaged in combat to refrain from inflicting the mortal sting if
they would mutually destroy each other, and thus leave the hive without
a queen?--acting as if they knew that the life of one of them was
necessary for the welfare of the community."

Concerning the modifications of structure and the instincts necessary to
produce the web of the spider, Fairhurst quotes the following from
Orton's _"Zoology."_ "Spiders are provided at the posterior end with two
or three pairs of appendages called spinnerets, which are homologous
(correspond structually) [tr. note: sic] with legs. The office of the
spinnerets is t