SOLITARY LIFE 63 



Social Development In the development of social life 

 among insects we find all gradations, the solitary, the 

 gregarious, and the social. The independent insects, 

 such as the chinch-bug;, take little thought for their off- 

 spring. Then come forms such as the solitary wasps, to 

 he treated further on; these provide for their young. 

 Then come the mining-bees, which live apparently in 

 communities in sandbanks, but which in reality have but 

 an entrance or hall in common, off from which each in- 

 sect has a separate apartment where no other intrudes. 

 Then come the ants and bees with their communistic 

 life, division of labor and sharing of responsibilities. In 

 such an organization is to be found the most advan- 

 tageous plan of life. The ant alone is helpless, but in 

 its organization, the colony, it is one of the most suc- 

 cessful, because, by reason of numbers and division of 

 labor, it secures protection, food, shelter, and insures like 

 conditions for its offspring. The most successful are the 

 most sociable. 



Mud-daubers. -Familiar to all of us are the mud- 

 daubers. They are to be seen any bright day flying 

 around the moist earth in the vicinity of our wells, or 

 nervously walking about on the muddy edges of some 

 little pool or pond. If you will watch one of them 

 you will soon observe it kneading and rolling up the 

 clay with its mandibles into pellets to build a strange 

 little cell for its young in the most peculiar and out- 

 of-the-way place. You may at some time have found 

 one of their domiciles attached to an unused garment 

 in your cloak-room ; you have doubtless seen these 



