as egoistically.  And just as the welfare of Hydra is superior to that of any one of its constituent cells, so the well-being of a hive of bees may be safeguarded only by the actual sacrifice of some of its members.  Should food supplies be inadequate, the superfluous drones are stung to death,—­the victims of legalized murder.  But more marvelous still is the provision that is said to be made by certain individuals for their own destruction should this become desirable.  As every one knows, a reigning queen may leave the hive with many of her subjects and “swarm” in a new locality.  When she does this, during the warm months, the workers of the original hive feed some of the female larvae with richer food, and place these potential queens or princesses in special roomy cells apart from the ordinary brood chambers; one of them soon emerges to become a new sovereign.  Let us note in passing how similar this is to the production of new egg-cells in a Hydra, when the mature germs of an earlier generation are prepared and discharged.  When, now, the colder weather sets in, and the possibility of subsequent swarming is set aside, the reigning queen is allowed by her attendant guards to visit the royal cells, whose occupants she stings to death, thus destroying any possible claimant to her place.  And when the royal princess constructs her part of the pupal case, she leaves an aperture so that if and when it should become necessary for the queen to kill her, the sovereign would not injure her sting and be unable to kill the other individuals who might become aspirants for the throne and so precipitate a civil war!  As in the case of the self-destructive act on the part of a stinging cell in Hydra, altruistic subservience to the interests of the colony can go no farther.

The ants form stable colonies of still higher grades, where the workers are not all alike in general structure, but become more rigidly specialized for the performance of restricted tasks.  As before, there is the fundamental differentiation into the sexual “queens” and males, and the sterile workers concerned with the immediate material life of the community.  In some species the workers serve as herdsmen, caring for the ant-cattle or aphids, from which they receive minute drops of a sweet juice for food.  The aphids are tended on the leaves of various plants during the summer, and are carefully reared and stabled and fed below ground during the winter months.  In other species seeds are procured and stored in underground granaries.  The leaf-cutters are forms which grow food supplies of fungi in subterranean mushroom gardens; the compost consists of cuttings brought from the leaves of bushes by myriads of workers, whose processions are guarded by larger-headed soldiers of several ranks.  In the honey-ants of Colorado and tropical America certain individuals pass their time suspended from the roof of a large nest-chamber, where they receive the sweet juice brought in by the workers.  They