MORE ABOUT INSECTS 77 



however, is tenated by numbers of minute creatures which 

 attack the cellulose and break it down into other substances, 

 and the termites digest the results of their activities. The 

 termites, therefore, live entirely on the products of other 

 creatures, and without the cooperation of their little friends 

 inside them they would soon starve to death no matter how 

 much of their favorite food they ate. 



Beggars never making any attempt to work, and indeed 

 incapable of doing anything at all, occur among the insects. 

 Beetles of this description live in ants' nests where they are 

 fed and cared for by the ants with as much solicitude as if 

 they were their own young The beetles, wasps, crickets, 

 spiders, wood-lice, larvae of flies, moths, butterflies, etc., and 

 even larger things, like legless lizards, that live in ants' nests 

 are a most absorbing study in themselves. Some are parasitic, 

 others probably scavengers; but why most of them are tol- 

 erated there we do not know. 



Incompetent decrepit beggars asking charity are one thing; 

 energetic and powerful ruf!ians enforcing charity quite another. 

 Certain ants come in the latter category Beyond raiding 

 the nests of other species, killing the workers and carrying off 

 the pupae, these ants do not work at all. The pupae they 

 raise as slaves, and these slaves perform all the work for the 

 colony, making the nest for and raising the young of their 

 masters. The so-called cuckoo-bees have somewhat similar 

 habits, living at the expense mostly of the bumble-bees the 

 various species of which they resemble in color, though they 

 are usually somewhat larger than their victims and lack the 

 pollen basket on the hind legs. Cuckoo-bees are all males or 

 females, without workers. A cuckoo-bee, entering a bumble- 

 bees' nest, appropriates the wax and honey, often kilHng the 

 queen if she interferes. Her young are then fed through the 

 efforts of the worker bumble-bees at the expense of the colony, 

 which produces no male or female bumble-bees, only cuckoo- 

 bees. 



Narcotic peddlers have their representatives among the 



