It has not been definitely established whether, among ants, a single female is in all cases the founder of the whole colony, but it is certain that there are only a few females. In the tropical Termites we know that the ovaries of the female attain to such a colossal size that one female must certainly suffice for the necessities of the largest colonies. Grassi has shown, indeed, that, as far as the South European Termites are concerned, not only are there several females present, but that even the workers frequently reproduce; but the Termites in general are inhabitants of warm countries, and the few European species probably hardly represent the original composition of these animal colonies. But of the tropical species, which have as yet not been sufficiently studied, we know at least the extraordinary dimensions of the body, and the corresponding fertility of the queens, and we conclude from this that only a few can be present in each termitary[18]. [18] Ingwe Sjostedt has recently established in Africa that it is usually a single queen and a single king that found a termitary (_Schwed. Akad. Abh._ Bd. 34, 1902). Now that we have discussed all these facts it will not be out of place to summarize the results, in as far as they have any relation to the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the inheritance of acquired characters. No _direct_ proof of such transmission could be found; on the contrary, it has been shown that all that has hitherto been advanced as such will not stand the test of close examination; an inheritance of wounds and mutilations does not exist, the transmission of traumatically induced epilepsy is not only doubtful as regards its causes, but cannot even be considered as the transmission of a particular morphological lesion.