26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the young of the Sitaris. The time has come for the last to be- 

 gin to act. They have been called Triongulins by Ldon Pufour, 

 from the claws with which they are armed, and by which they at- 

 tach themselves to the bodies of the Anthophores waiting for the 

 next stage in the conditions that favor their development. With 

 fine weather the female Anthophores come out and carry on their 

 work of burrowing and storing up honey till the time of fecunda- 

 tion arrives. Then the Triongulin changes its quarters from the 

 body of the male to that of the female, where it remains on the 

 watch for the laying of the egg, when it transfers itself to that, 

 and with it enters the honey-chamber. With it it is shut up 

 when the Anthophorus closes the door of the chamber for another 

 season. The Triongulin will not eat the honey, for it is sure death 

 to it by drowning if it touches it. It floats on the egg and feeds 

 upon it ; when it has used up its ration, it changes its shape, as 

 well as its habits and taste. It is as eager now for the honey as 

 it was to keep away from it, and grows upon it till it goes through 

 another change and becomes the Sitaris which we observe coming 

 out from the chambers of the Anthophorus. Three years of assid- 

 uous studies and investigation were required to obtain this curi- 

 ous life-history. Contrast now the results obtained by Leon Du- 

 four, an entomologist and naturalist of the school of Cuvier, with 

 those which M. Fabre has reached by experiment. 



I could also show you examples of an excessive socialism in so- 

 cieties of animals, even passing the limits of what has been con- 

 ceived for men ; comprising individuals whose parts are assigned 

 with the greatest precision, some working to feed the collectivity, 

 eating and digesting for all, others possessing the single function 

 of reproduction of the species ; and still others serving as beasts of 

 burden for the rest ; and looking a little further, we might occa- 

 sionally discover idlers at rest while their fellows are working to 

 feed them. Take the lobster which we fish from among the rocks 

 and on the sea-coast. In the earlier part of its life, it swims at 

 large on the surface of the fresh water. Its plump and fleshy 

 body, so sought for as a food, is represented then by a broad and 

 extremely thin plate, so peculiar that the zoologists of the old 

 schools made it not only a genus, but one of the types of a group 

 very remote from its fellows. What would be the difference be- 

 tween these zoologists and one who should regard the child and 

 the adult of a savage man seen for the first time on some un- 

 known island as forming two genera ? Is it not evident that in 

 the times of Linnaeus and Cuvier, when they examined animals at 

 only one moment of their existence, naturalists could not follow 

 the filiation of facts which evolution alone reveals to us ? The 

 discovery of the Triongulin and the Biorhiza, made when species 

 were defined only according to characteristics falling under the 



