io6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"We remark that this devotion to the puhlic weal is like society 

 in its beginning. It is less developed here than among the wasps 

 and the honeybees. Near the one who died so bravely on the 

 field of honor, I saw a new halictus alight in front of the enemy 

 at the first attack to go take care of the dying. Honeybees do 

 not hesitate when their city is to be defended, and bumblebees, 

 Hoffer says, often precipitate themselves upon the man who is de- 

 stroying their nest ; but their civilization, if I may use the word, 

 is much more advanced than that of the halictus. Courage and 

 abnegation are therefore not only the appanage of mankind or of 

 rich societies of honeybees and ants ; they belong to every associ- 

 ation to all those, whether beasts or people, who bind their 

 hearts together in the struggle for existence. 



The tenacity of the sphoecodes on the field of battle is not less 

 " surprising ; it is, so far as I know, the only example of a parasite 

 issuing from the peaceful j)rogeny of the apiaries that gives 

 battle for the acquisition of spoil. 



Have we here a species of parasite in course of formation ? I 

 do not know. There is a great distance between the sphcecode 

 and the halictus. The variation of the genus or species sphoecodes 

 is very great, it is true; but that of the bumblebees is of the 

 same order, and there are fossil bumble bees. The hazardous life 

 of the parasite should teach us reserve concerning the cause of its 

 variations. 



I believe we may observe a nascent parasitism in another 

 family of Hymenoj^tera. I mean among those insects which hon- 

 estly gain life for their young most of the time, but which also 

 do not disdain to rob a neighbor, to play the parasite, and that 

 not fortuitously, but almost every time an occasion presents itself. 

 I have found such insects in the spider-killing family of the Pom- 

 pilidcE: 



The pompiledes are those little black wasps, with a somewhat 

 party-colored abdomen, which may be seen lingering on sunny 

 talus or walls, with their antennae and wings in febrile vibration. 

 Those that I have observed in France and Algeria chase spiders. 

 They pursue them, keeping in touch with the ground like a dog 

 following game. The manner of attack varies with the species 

 of the hunters. Nearly all those that I have seen light directly 

 upon the enemy, which rolls over, and stab it. The spider is gen- 

 erally put in a safe place on top of a tuft or a stone, while the 

 pompilus digs a hole in which it deposits the anaesthetized head, 

 after gluing its egg upon the abdomen. The pompilides are not 

 all diggers some choose or prepare the most singular places for 

 their progeny ; but the general rule is as I have described it. 



My observations have been made chiefly upon the Pompilus 

 viaticus (Latreille) and on the Pompilus rufipes (Vanderlinden). 



