CHAPTER IV. 

 INSECT-ARCHITECTURE. 



MANY young naturalists are deterred from studying in- 

 sects by the lack of books enabling them to readily identify 

 the species they collect; but if handicapped in this direc- 

 tion, they can nevertheless observe the curious habits of 

 insects, and form most interesting collections of their co- 

 coons, nests, and various contrivances for concealment from 

 their enemies. 



Man's earliest, most primitive attempts at architecture 

 were undoubtedly in the direction of obtaining shelter from 

 too great heat or cold, from rain and snow, and from hos- 

 tile beasts and more hostile men. For the same reason 

 insects make shelters of various sorts, both for their eggs, 

 their young, and themselves. More unconscioiis (and often, 

 perhaps, semi-conscious) ingenuity is expended by insects, 

 especially the social kinds, than by any of the higher 

 animals, not even excepting the birds. We know that 

 fishes in rare instances build rude nests, and show some 

 slight degree of care for their progeny; squirrels and mice 

 faintly imitate birds in nest-building: but where even among 

 birds do we find nests so complex and cunningly contrived 

 as those of ants, paper-wasps, and social bees ? Do we really 

 know that birds and beasts, the domesticated species ex- 

 cepted, are, as regards architectural skill and general 

 reasoning power, any higher in the intellectual scale than 

 the social insects, with their different kinds of individuals 

 assigned to this or that duty, their laborers and soldiers, 

 and, in the case of ants, their system of slave-labor, their 

 herds of milch-cows (the Aphides), and genius for house- 

 keeping, nursing, and civic police duties ? But not content 



