240 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



spite of all her struggles dragged the object of contestation under the 

 sand. The unfortunate mother might have preserved her own life from 

 the enemy : she had but to relinquish the bag, and escape out of the pit. 

 But, wonderful example of maternal affection ! she preferred allowing 

 herself to be buried alive along with the treasure dearer to her than her 

 existence ; and it was only by force that Bonnet at length withdrew her 

 from the unequal conflict. But the bag of eggs remained with the assassin : 

 and though he pushed her repeatedly with a twig of wood, she still per- 

 sisted in continuing on the spot. Life seemed to have become a burden 

 to her, and all her pleasures to have been buried in the grave which 

 contained the germ of her progeny !^ The attachment of this affectionate 

 mother is not confined to her eggs. After the young spiders are hatched, 

 they make their way out of the bag by an orifice, which she is careful to 

 open for them, and without which they could never escape^ ; and then, 

 like the young of the Surinam toad {Rana pipa), they attach themselves 

 in clusters upon her back, belly, head, and even legs ; and in this situation, 

 where they present a very singular appearance, she carries them about 

 with her and feeds them until their first moult, when they are big enough 

 to provide their own subsistence. I have more than once been gratified 

 by a sight of the former part of this interesting spectacle ; and when I 

 nearly touched the mother, thus covered by hundreds of her progeny, it 

 was most amusing to see them all leap from her back and run away in 

 every direction.^ 



A similar attachment to their eggs and young is manifested by many 

 other species of the same tribe, particularly of the genera Lycosa and 

 Dolomedes. Clubiona holosericea was found by De Geer in her nest 

 with fifty or sixty young ones, when manifesting nothing of her usual 

 timidity, so obstinately did she persist in remaining with them, that to 

 drive her away it was necessary to cut her whole nest in pieces.^ 



I must now conduct you to a hasty survey of those insects which live 

 together in societies, and fabricate dwellings for the community, such as 

 ants, wasps, bees, humble-bees, and termites, whose great object (sometimes 

 combined, indeed, with the storing up of a stock of winter provisions for 

 themselves) is the nutrition and education of their young. Of the pro- 

 ceedings of many of these insects we know comparatively nothing. 

 There are, it is likely, some hundreds of distinct species of bees which 

 live in societies, and form nests of a different and peculiar construction. 

 The constitution of these societies is probably as various as the exterior 

 forms of their nests, and their habits possibly curious in the highest degree; 

 yet our knowledge is almost confined to the economy of the hive-bee and 



» Bonnet, ii. 435. 2 De Geer, vii. 194. 



' Dr. Heineken, whose zeal for Entomology as manifested by his valuable communica- 

 tions in spite of ill health to the Zoological Journal shows how great a loss the science sus- 

 tained by his untimely death, states that having placed a large female Lycosa covered with 

 her young, just hatched, in a cage so constructed that they could quit it while she could not, 

 he fed her with flies for tifteen days, but never observed her to feed her young ones, nor 

 them to quit their station on her body, nor to seem at all interested or excited when she 

 was engaged in eating. At length, fifteen days after their birth, they quitted the mother 

 and escaped from the cage. Dr. Heineken, however, admits that observations of this kind 

 made on insects in confinement are by no means conclusive. {^Zool. Journ. v. 192.) 



* De Geer, vii. 268. 



