The new view is, that instincts arise from variations in the germ-plasm. The union of the germ elements of two individuals causes it to vary more or less from either parent. These variations will be favorable and unfavorable. The unfavorable ones will produce offspring handicapped in the struggle for life and they will disappear. The favorable variations will produce descendants possessing advantages for survival and leave numerous offspring. It is not easy to accept this view, but I think there are some facts that support it. I will advance a few. The hive of the honey-bee contains three kinds of insects: the queen, the drones or males, and the workers. The queen makes her nuptial flight but once in a life-time, and does it from instinct. How can an instinct like this have been acquired by being performed but once? The drones are derived from unfertilized eggs; yet their instincts are those of the male, not of the female. As they have no male ancestors, it seems probable there was in the germ-plasm of some queen bee, at a time far back, some change which allowed unfertilized eggs to produce males. The workers are all females, not fully developed sexually on account of a diet with too small a proportion of nitrogenous food and containing so large a proportion of the hydrocarbons. They inherit from the mother, or rather from the germ-plasm, the instinct to gather honey, yet neither their male nor female ancestors ever gathered any honey in their lives, nor have they for ages. Far back in antiquity the queen, no doubt, did gather honey, but the disuse of this instinct has not caused it to disappear in the working bee, as it should have done according to the Lamarckian theory of disuse causing decay of function. Is there any way to account for this, except on the theory that the germ-plasm produces working bees as well as the other kinds, irrespective of the habits of the queen? Her character in this respect is fixed and does not change. Is it unreasonable to think that some time in the past, in some queen bee, was formed a germ-plasm capable of producing three varieties, and that there was such an advantage in it for survival, that it has been continued ever since by natural selection? Queens not able to do this have not been selected, left no offspring, and thus the perfection of the stock has been assured. One more case. Some years ago, when interested in agricultural entomology, I made a study of the so-called seventeen-year locust. Noting the wonderful precision with which the female cuts into a soft twig of a tree and lays its eggs in two rows, the thought was suggested to me, how can an instinct, used only a few hours, once in seventeen years, be acquired by exercise and persist in the offspring seventeen years later? Weismann's theory of the origin of instinct from favorable variations in the germ-plasm offers, it seems to me, a rational explanation.