CAREFUL MOTHERS 



With such ornamental antlers she could never bore her way into 

 decaying wood. 



Not less huge than the Hercules are the black Actaeon and the 

 white and green dappled Elephant-beetle ; and here again the males 

 are provided with great horns. In the case of another species, the 

 mighty Strategus, a Rhinoceros-beetle, the larvae find their way 

 from the soil to the roots and the base of the stem of young coconut- 

 palms, and destroy them. Among the Weevils even there is a large 

 black beetle, the Palm-weevil (Plate 29, II, 10). The female bores 

 a hole in a coconut-palm and lays her egg in it, and the larva, 

 when it emerges, excavates the interior of the stem, and finally 

 pupates in a cocoon woven of bast-fibres. And the Perandra (Plate 29, 

 II, 9) actually fells trees as thick as one's arm, in order to lay its 

 eggs in them when they begin to decay. 



Even greater riddles are presented by the egg-laying of insects 

 when the adult has no dealings with the food-plant of the larvae. 

 How does the butterfly know that she must lay her eggs on the 

 leaves of this or that bush, when she herself lives only on the nectar 

 of flowers, so that leaves mean nothing to her? It is easy to suggest 

 that as the eggs ripen in her body she remembers her infancy, when 

 the leaves were her own food, but to do so is to be guilty of an 

 unjustifiable anthropomorphism. What can we human beings know 

 of the mnemonic powers of an insect ! 



Moreover, there are accessory circumstances which cannot 

 possibly be explained by memory. The butterfly, for instance, 

 cannot remember that as an egg she adhered to the underside of 

 a leaf, for an egg sees and feels nothing. Yet every butterfly affixes 

 her eggs precisely as is proper for an insect of her species. And are 

 we to credit an insect with not only the memory of past events, but 

 also with prophetic foresight? How otherwise do the caterpillars 

 of the Silk-moths come to spin themselves a silken house, a cocoon, 

 in which to pupate? They cannot know that on their next moult 

 they will become immobile pupae, needing no food, but in special 

 need of shelter and protection, since they cannot flee their enemies ! 

 As a matter of fact, such a caterpillar needs to look even further 

 ahead ; it must know that when the skin of the pupa splits open a 

 winged creature will appear, which will have to escape from the 

 cocoon, for the silkworm leaves an opening as it spins its house, 

 protected by bristles as the opening of an eel-trap is guarded by 



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