176 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



source of nourishment, to be obtained without painful 

 search or dangerous conflict : the saccharine exudation 

 of the flowers. The wasteful system of living upon prey, 

 by no means favourable to large populations, has been 

 preserved for the feeble larvae ; but the vigorous adult 

 has abandoned it for an easier and more prosperous 

 existence. Thus the Philanthus of our own days was 

 gradually developed ; thus was formed the double 

 system of nourishment practised by the various pre- 

 datory insects which we know. 



The bee has done still better ; from the moment of 

 leaving the egg it dispenses completely with chance-won 

 aliments. It has invented honey, the food of its larvae. 

 Renouncing the chase for ever, and becoming exclusively 

 agricultural, this insect has acquired a degree of moral 

 and physical prosperity that the predatory species are far 

 from sharing. Hence the flourishing colonies of the 

 Anthophorae, the Osmiae, the Eucerae, the Halicti, and 

 other makers of honey, while the hunters of prey work 

 in isolation ; hence the societies in which the bee 

 displays its admirable talents, the supreme expression of 

 instinct. 



This is what I should say if I were a " transformist." 

 All this is a chain of highly logical deductions, and it 

 hangs together with a certain air of reality, such as we 

 like to look for in a host of " transformist " arguments 

 which are put forward as irrefutable. Well, I make a 

 present of my deductive theory to whosoever desires it, 

 and without the least regret ; I do not believe a smgle 

 word of it, and I confess my profound ignorance of the 

 origin of the twofold system of diet. 



One thing I do see more clearly after all my experi- 



