Lastly, it must be remembered that the instinct to make cells and honey is one which has no very great hold upon its possessors. Bees _can_ make cells and honey, nor do they seem to have any very violent objection to doing so; but it is quite clear that there is nothing in their structure and instincts which urges them on to do these things for the mere love of doing them, as a hen is urged to sit upon a chalk stone, concerning which she probably is at heart utterly sceptical, rather than not sit at all. There is no honey and cell-making instinct so strong as the instinct to eat, if they are hungry, or to grow wings, and make themselves into bees at all. Like ourselves, so long as they can get plenty to eat and drink, they will do no work. Under these circumstances, not one drop of honey nor one particle of wax will they collect, except, I presume, to make cells for the rearing of their young. Sydney Smith writes:— “The most curious instance of a change of instinct is recorded by Darwin. The bees carried over to Barbadoes and the Western Isles ceased to lay up any honey after the first year, as they found it not useful to them. They found the weather so fine, and materials for making honey so plentiful, that they quitted their grave, prudent, and mercantile character, became exceedingly profligate and debauched, ate up their capital, resolved to work no more, and amused themselves by flying about the sugar-houses and stinging the blacks” (Lecture XVII. on Moral Philosophy). The ease, then, with which the honey-gathering and cell-making habits are relinquished, would seem to point strongly in the direction of their acquisition at a comparatively late period of development. I have dealt with bees only, and not with ants, which would perhaps seem to present greater difficulty, inasmuch as in some families of these there are two, or even three, castes of neuters with well-marked and wide differences of structure and instinct; but I think the reader will agree with me that the ants are sufficiently covered by the bees, and that enough, therefore, has been said already. Mr. Darwin supposes that these modifications of structure and instinct have been effected by the accumulation of numerous slight, profitable, spontaneous variations on the part of the fertile parents, which has caused them (so, at least, I understand him) to lay this or that particular kind of egg, which should develop into a kind of bee or ant, with this or that particular instinct, which instinct is merely a co-ordination with structure, and in no way attributable to use or habit in preceding generations.