CHAP. Ill 



FOSSORIAL SOLITARY WASPS 



forms, they are true individualists, and their lives and instincts 

 offer many subjects for reflection. Unlike the social Insects they 

 can learn nothing whatever from either example or precept. 

 The skill of each individual is prompted by no imitation. The 

 life is short, the later stages of the individual life are totally 

 different from the earlier : the individuals of one generation 

 only in rare cases see even the commencement of the life of the 

 next ; the progeny, for the benefit of which they labour with 



FIG. 37. Scelifthron nigripes 9 (Sub-Fam. Sphegides). Amazons, x \. 



unsurpassable skill and industry, being unknown to them. Were 

 such a solicitude displayed by ourselves we should connect it 

 with a high sense of duty, and poets and moralists would vie in 

 its laudation. But having dubbed ourselves the higher animals, 

 we ascribe the eagerness of the solitary wasp to impulse or 

 instinct, and we exterminate their numerous species from the face 

 of the earth for ever, without even seeking to make a prior ac- 

 quaintance with them. Meanwhile our economists and moralists 

 devote their volumes to admiration of the progress of the civilisa- 

 tion that effects this destruction and tolerates this negligence. 



