Vii THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS 127 



profitably exercise our minds. Let us follow Espinas's 

 admirable discussion of the subject. 



We may begin with the simple association of ant and 

 aphides as commensals eating at the same bountiful table. 

 But as ants discovered that the aphides were overflowing 

 with sweetness, they formed the habit of licking them, 

 the aphides submitting with passive enjoyment. More- 

 over, as the ants nesting near the foot of a tree covered 

 with aphides would resent that others should invade 

 their preserves, it is not surprising to find that they 

 should continue their earthen tunnels up the stem and 

 branches, and should eventually build an aerial stable 

 for some of their cattle. Thither also they transport 

 some of their own larva? to be sunned, and as they carried 

 these back again when the rain fell, they would surely 

 not require the assistance of an abstract idea to prompt 

 them to take some aphides also downstairs. Or perhaps 

 it is enough to suppose that the aphides, by no means 

 objecting to the ants' attentions, did not require any 

 coaxing to descend the tunnels, and eventually to live 

 in the cellars of the nests, where they feed comfortably 

 on roots, and are sheltered from the bad weather of 

 autumn. In autumn the aphides lay eggs in the cellars 

 to which they have been brought by force or coaxing or 

 otherwise, and these eggs the ants take care of, putting 

 them in safe cradles, licking them as tenderly as they 

 do those of their own kind. Thus the domestication of 

 aphides by ants is completed. 



3. Storing. A beginning of storing may be looked for 

 in activities like those of earthworms, which take leaves 

 dow r n into their burrows, at once making these more 

 comfortable and providing a supply of food for the 

 rainy day. Among insects we find a long inclined plane 

 from the sacred scarabees, common in the Mediterranean 

 region, which roll balls of dung to their holes, and gnaw 

 at them at their leisure for days, to the hive-bees with 

 their exaggerated storing instinct. The famous French 

 entomologist Fabre (who died in 1915 at the age of 

 ninety-two) has described inimitably how the mother 

 scarabee moulds a pear-shaped mass of dung and deposits 



