184 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 



A highly specialized storing routine like that of 

 hive-bees always gives one at first an impression 

 of the inexplicable even magical. It is wiser 

 to start from much simpler collecting industries, 

 for an elaborate instinctive capacity is probably 

 the result of adding on one embellishment after 

 another to a broad commonplace foundation, of 

 carrying on to a fine issue a kind of behavior 

 which in its rudiments is shared by many. A 

 beginning of storing may be looked for, perhaps, in 

 activities like those of earthworms, which collect 

 leaves and drag them down into their burrows, 

 at once making these more comfortable and pro- 

 viding a supply of food for the rainy day. It is 

 surely the acquisitive habit that they have, these 

 earthworms, for we got more than fourscore leaflets 

 from one burrow, and we have often seen feathers 

 as well as leaves being taken underground. We 

 would suggest that one of the roots of the more 

 specialized storing activities, which have a definite 

 reference to an on-coming scarce time, is to be 

 found in a generalized acquisitiveness like that of 

 the earthworms, whose importance Gilbert White 

 and Charles Darwin were at one in recognizing. 



It is among insects, however, that we find an 

 inclined plane of storing activities that lead even- 

 tually to the climax illustrated by hive-bees and 

 by some of the ants. Many visitors to the Medi- 

 terranean region have admired the industry of the 

 scarabees who roll marble-sized balls of dung to their 

 holes, and there gnaw at them continuously till all 



